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SpaceX didn’t want to blow up its launchpad. It may have done just that
- verdverm 3y agoNot as bad as it could have been, but likely worse than they expected or wanted. This is the most "concrete" view of the damage below the OLM so far: https://twitter.com/OCDDESIGNS/status/1649430284843069443/photo/1 https://twitter.com/OCDDESIGNS/status/1649430284843069443/ph... Damage & puncturing to the tank farm: https://www.youtube.com/live/omouxjzI17U?feature=share&t=2340 https://www.youtube.com/live/omouxjzI17U?feature=share&t=234... You can see how the housing for the cable spool is shreded here: https://www.youtube.com/live/omouxjzI17U?feature=share&t=2117 https://www.youtube.com/live/omouxjzI17U?feature=share&t=211... RGV has posted a few photos from their flyover: https://twitter.com/RGVaerialphotos/media https://twitter.com/RGVaerialphotos/media
- gardenfelder 3y agohttps://archive.ph/L19HH https://archive.ph/L19HH
- photochemsyn 3y agoDoes the Washington Post realize how badly its credibility has been damaged since the Bezos takeover? Everything they publish is now seen in the context of Bezos's other interests - Discord runs on Google Cloud, not AWS, so the attack on Discord is understandable. Resentment over the failures of Blue Origin inform this article, don't they? Kind of like Buzzfeed, if you ask me. The WaPo has sold its soul for a mess of pottage.
- Incipient 3y agoEverything that has a commercial interest, is going to push an agenda, or at the very least, take a particular set of views. If you're aware of that, and read it in that context, I think that's fine.
- gundmc 3y agoWhat an oddly phrased headline. Why not "SpaceX may have damaged launchpad during test flight". Certainly it goes without saying that they didn't want to blow it up? This reads like an online blog and not a premier newspaper.
- lazyasciiart 3y agoWell, the article contains this quote: > Leading up to Thursday’s launch, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said success would be measured by a simple metric: “Just don’t blow up the launchpad.”
- usrusr 3y agoThe good news is that next time they can celebrate a meaningful success if they achieve fully reusable stage 0.
- startupsfail 3y agoI don’t understand why these chemical rockets and another flight to the moon are needed. Isn’t it a dead end? And pointless carbon emissions on the way? Nuclear fusion gives a path to clean energy and allows star-flight. Chemical rockets don’t.
- usrusr 3y agoIf we had fusion, methane rockets would be exactly what we'd want to build
- anon84873628 3y agoCarbon "sequestration" and space travel all in one!
- tekla 3y agoPlease inform the rest of us, the unwashed plebs, exactly what technology exists to get us off this rock to the moom that isnt chemistry based and can be used in the next 20 years
- verdverm 3y agoPerhaps a space elevator if we put in the effort
- startupsfail 3y agoWhat happened to ground based laser propulsion? Where you heat up the propellant with a ground based laser during takeoff and then use the same laser source to power your ship is space? I remember a few videos of launching small rockets with a ground based laser from some twenty years ago. Haven’t laser technology improved since?
- taylorportman 3y agoA plasma jet powered by fusion?
- state_less 3y agoIn any event, they’re going to need a better launchpad design. They’ll want a launchpad they can turn around and reuse rapidly in the future.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoAccording to Elon they started designing a water cooled plate to put under the launch pad 3 months ago.
- Zigurd 3y agoAt this point there is project risk from them not wanting to redesign and rebuild the launch mount. If an add-on flame diverter is not enough, they will have just delayed a painful decision that imposes long lead-times. It might even be a blessing if the launch mount can't be repaired in a cost-effective way and they have to start over. But an iterative, Agile-like approach looks great when perfecting welded joints. But doing too many more iterations to get to orbit, in which boosters and Starhips are expended, could break the project. Agile is appropriate for a lot of software projects (n.b. not Scrum), but maybe not for the biggest rocket ever made.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoIf the flame diverter is not sufficient, it's likely that this launch will tell them that. So in that scenario, they've likely saved two months.
- Zigurd 3y agoThat is possible. But, so far, the decision-making has been faulty: the decision to go ahead without, at least, the flame diverter, was a poor decision. Elon will be loathe to make any decision other than "Patch it up and add a flame diverter that fits between the legs of the launch mount." Secondly, no decision at this point will save them two months. They are in for many months of reconstruction, apart from all the other design changes needed. They are also in for FAA scrutiny that will take at least several months. There is a large incentive to be unrealistic about this: A realistic view of delays makes an already very optimistic schedule for supplying a Starship-based lunar lander to the Artemis project look very risky. What we are seeing is the limits to scaling an iterative project. It is transitioning from learning how to weld stainless steel, which can evolve quickly, to learning how to fix multiple large problems when every iteration costs 39 rocket engines, 200 tankers of fuel/oxidizer, etc.