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SpaceX’s Starship Kicked Up a Dust Cloud, Leaving Texans With a Mess

26 points by perihelions 4y ago

samwillis 4y ago
https://archive.ph/ObX5n https://archive.ph/ObX5n This is exactly what I was concerned about in my comment yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35641876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35641876 They may well be able to justify the lack of diverter/deluge from an engineering prototype perspective, I'm all for moving quickly. But the lack of foresight of what a massive dust cloud does politically is going to cause so many issues going forward.
- dTal 4y ago
  It's quite clear that the lack of diverter/deluge was a misstep, and the effect was unanticipated. So many things were damaged - launch cameras, that car, a pad-side oxygen tank, likely several of the rocket motors. You can see enormous chunks of concrete flung into the air on the recording - it's a miracle the damage was not worse. The rocket could easily have been destroyed on the pad, along with the entire launch complex. Given the obvious problems at the business end of the rocket it very possibly even cost the mission. It was just a bad decision.
  - RetpolineDrama 4y ago
    >It's quite clear that the lack of diverter/deluge was a misstep I don't agree. None of this, pad included, is production hardware. This test article was obsolete and on the verge of being scrapped (like the several before it) to make room for newer models. The pad itself (except the ring structure, which is fine) is temporary. The tank farm is temporary. The only infrastructure that really needed to be protected was the tower frame itself, which is fine. The overwhelming majority of commenters in here and that flagged article from the other day seemingly refuse to understand that almost everything involved in the test was temporary/planned to be scrapped. The "damage" wasn't mitigated *because it doesn't matter*.
    - fabian2k 4y ago
      The debris very likely compromised the test because it damaged the engines. That is not intentional and is something SpaceX needs to fix.
moralestapia 4y ago
>In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed. >"There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area" >In June, an environmental assessment by the Federal Aviation Administration concluded that SpaceX’s plans for orbital launches would have “no significant impact” on the region along the Gulf Coast. There was a thread here [0] a few days ago of a blog post that raised some valid criticism to the way Starbase its conducting its ops and how the EPA is playing dumb around it. Funny thing, it got flagged and hidden almost immediately, even though it was quite active and getting several comments per minute ... What I've found particularly disturbing is how some commenters were dismissing the blog post as ignorant, misinformed, a "breathless doom mongering", etc. I wonder if they're on Musk's payroll or if they just shill for free. I'd like to hear what they say about this but they're, conveniently, no longer around now. A classic. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279
- junofan 4y ago
  It’s a big rocket. What do you expect?
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    You could expect them to build adequate measures to limit damage like flame trenches and water deluge systems. And to build new rocket launch facilities in suitable areas with sufficient distance to cities.
    - RetpolineDrama 4y ago
      See my above comment, you and a bunch of other commenters are making wildly incorrect assumptions about a huge list of things. It might surprise you that the Engineers running the current leader in space flight (tonnage to orbit, reliability, reusability, cost, pick your metric) aren't complete idiots.
      - 4y ago
SentientAtom 4y ago
Dust Egress is pretty tame in terms of environmental impact. Guess they need to mske these pads more remote.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  “There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area,” Mr. Balderas said. The blast, he added, had created a crater that he estimated was around 25 feet deep. "But without a chemical analysis of the dust and debris, he added, it was difficult to say whether or not they were harmful to human health." From the article...
  - robertlagrant 4y ago
    It's nyt, though. How objective has their past reporting on Musk-related enterprises been? I know it's a weak spot with some, just as the inverse is also a weak spot with some others.
    - moralestapia 4y ago
      Come on, man. There's plenty of footage of this.
      - RetpolineDrama 4y ago
        Yeah, footage of a throwaway car left inside the exclusion zone as a glorified camera tripod getting destroyed, yet they used that as an example to muddy the waters
        freejazz 4y ago
        You are totally overstating everything yourself, as that wasn't my takeaway from the article at all. If anything, the article makes it seem like not a big deal at all (there's a video of the town where all you see is... a cloud??). Nevertheless, contrary to what you are stating, I see tons of posts here cogently explaining why the SpaceX decisions about the launchpad were probably dumb.
chmaynard 4y ago
Welcome to the Republic of Musk. He's smarter and wealthier than everyone else, so he doesn't need to ask for permission or forgiveness.
- catchnear4321 4y ago
  he also has great taste in letters. why do you think he chose teXas? do you think that was an accident?
- ETH_start 4y ago
  When are people going to get past this pettiness, and just unite around the mission of making humanity a space spanning species.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    Sorry, too busy gagging at the thought. Some of don't think there's any benefit to this or what he's doing, and that your whole argument is totally complete nonsense. It is, after all, just science fiction and a huge assumption that anything would come of it at all. It's cool that you like. I was into space when I was a kid too, went to space camp, launched rockets. But I don't need to buy into cults of personalities and their narratives. Like you are in some rush to become a belter. What a horrible reality to be in where this is your hope for the future.
    - ETH_start 4y ago
      There's orders of magnitude more resources outside of Earth than on it, and those resources can be harvested without disrupting any natural environments. In fact, off-worlding all of human civilization's resource extraction and production would do more than any other project to protect Earth's natural habitats while ensuring every individual on Earth can enjoy the high, resource-intensive, quality of life that poeple in the developed world take for granted. Starship will reduce the cost of sending material to space 10 fold and potentially much more, and this after SpaceX already reduced the per kg launch to orbit cost 10 fold and spurred a massive expansion of orbital launches: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space?country=USA~RUS~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~IND~DEU~European+Space+Agency https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-... So all of these aspirations are realizable and the progress toward them is real. Perhaps you're addicted to being a cynic and tearing down any one who has hope, and that's why you're irrationally cynical.

26 points by perihelions 4y ago

https://archive.ph/ObX5n https://archive.ph/ObX5n This is exactly what I was concerned about in my comment yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35641876 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35641876 They may well be able to justify the lack of diverter/deluge from an engineering prototype perspective, I'm all for moving quickly. But the lack of foresight of what a massive dust cloud does politically is going to cause so many issues going forward.

dTal 4y ago
It's quite clear that the lack of diverter/deluge was a misstep, and the effect was unanticipated. So many things were damaged - launch cameras, that car, a pad-side oxygen tank, likely several of the rocket motors. You can see enormous chunks of concrete flung into the air on the recording - it's a miracle the damage was not worse. The rocket could easily have been destroyed on the pad, along with the entire launch complex. Given the obvious problems at the business end of the rocket it very possibly even cost the mission. It was just a bad decision.
- RetpolineDrama 4y ago
  >It's quite clear that the lack of diverter/deluge was a misstep I don't agree. None of this, pad included, is production hardware. This test article was obsolete and on the verge of being scrapped (like the several before it) to make room for newer models. The pad itself (except the ring structure, which is fine) is temporary. The tank farm is temporary. The only infrastructure that really needed to be protected was the tower frame itself, which is fine. The overwhelming majority of commenters in here and that flagged article from the other day seemingly refuse to understand that almost everything involved in the test was temporary/planned to be scrapped. The "damage" wasn't mitigated *because it doesn't matter*.
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    The debris very likely compromised the test because it damaged the engines. That is not intentional and is something SpaceX needs to fix.

moralestapia 4y ago

>In Port Isabel, a city about six miles northwest where at least one window shattered, residents were alarmed. >"There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area" >In June, an environmental assessment by the Federal Aviation Administration concluded that SpaceX’s plans for orbital launches would have “no significant impact” on the region along the Gulf Coast. There was a thread here [0] a few days ago of a blog post that raised some valid criticism to the way Starbase its conducting its ops and how the EPA is playing dumb around it. Funny thing, it got flagged and hidden almost immediately, even though it was quite active and getting several comments per minute ... What I've found particularly disturbing is how some commenters were dismissing the blog post as ignorant, misinformed, a "breathless doom mongering", etc. I wonder if they're on Musk's payroll or if they just shill for free. I'd like to hear what they say about this but they're, conveniently, no longer around now. A classic. 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35590279

junofan 4y ago
It’s a big rocket. What do you expect?
- fabian2k 4y ago
  You could expect them to build adequate measures to limit damage like flame trenches and water deluge systems. And to build new rocket launch facilities in suitable areas with sufficient distance to cities.
  - RetpolineDrama 4y ago
    See my above comment, you and a bunch of other commenters are making wildly incorrect assumptions about a huge list of things. It might surprise you that the Engineers running the current leader in space flight (tonnage to orbit, reliability, reusability, cost, pick your metric) aren't complete idiots.
    - 4y ago

SentientAtom 4y ago

Dust Egress is pretty tame in terms of environmental impact. Guess they need to mske these pads more remote.

bamboozled 4y ago
“There were bowling ball-sized pieces of concrete that came flying out of the launchpad area,” Mr. Balderas said. The blast, he added, had created a crater that he estimated was around 25 feet deep. "But without a chemical analysis of the dust and debris, he added, it was difficult to say whether or not they were harmful to human health." From the article...
- robertlagrant 4y ago
  It's nyt, though. How objective has their past reporting on Musk-related enterprises been? I know it's a weak spot with some, just as the inverse is also a weak spot with some others.
  - moralestapia 4y ago
    Come on, man. There's plenty of footage of this.
    - RetpolineDrama 4y ago
      Yeah, footage of a throwaway car left inside the exclusion zone as a glorified camera tripod getting destroyed, yet they used that as an example to muddy the waters
      - freejazz 4y ago
        You are totally overstating everything yourself, as that wasn't my takeaway from the article at all. If anything, the article makes it seem like not a big deal at all (there's a video of the town where all you see is... a cloud??). Nevertheless, contrary to what you are stating, I see tons of posts here cogently explaining why the SpaceX decisions about the launchpad were probably dumb.

chmaynard 4y ago

Welcome to the Republic of Musk. He's smarter and wealthier than everyone else, so he doesn't need to ask for permission or forgiveness.

catchnear4321 4y ago
he also has great taste in letters. why do you think he chose teXas? do you think that was an accident?
ETH_start 4y ago
When are people going to get past this pettiness, and just unite around the mission of making humanity a space spanning species.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Sorry, too busy gagging at the thought. Some of don't think there's any benefit to this or what he's doing, and that your whole argument is totally complete nonsense. It is, after all, just science fiction and a huge assumption that anything would come of it at all. It's cool that you like. I was into space when I was a kid too, went to space camp, launched rockets. But I don't need to buy into cults of personalities and their narratives. Like you are in some rush to become a belter. What a horrible reality to be in where this is your hope for the future.
  - ETH_start 4y ago
    There's orders of magnitude more resources outside of Earth than on it, and those resources can be harvested without disrupting any natural environments. In fact, off-worlding all of human civilization's resource extraction and production would do more than any other project to protect Earth's natural habitats while ensuring every individual on Earth can enjoy the high, resource-intensive, quality of life that poeple in the developed world take for granted. Starship will reduce the cost of sending material to space 10 fold and potentially much more, and this after SpaceX already reduced the per kg launch to orbit cost 10 fold and spurred a massive expansion of orbital launches: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-launched-into-outer-space?country=USA~RUS~CHN~GBR~JPN~FRA~IND~DEU~European+Space+Agency https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-... So all of these aspirations are realizable and the progress toward them is real. Perhaps you're addicted to being a cynic and tearing down any one who has hope, and that's why you're irrationally cynical.