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A bit of both, I guess? The whole thing was a test. The ship and rocket themselves would always have been scrapped afterwards, and the goal of the whole endeav
by hooby 3y ago
A bit of both, I guess?
The whole thing was a test. The ship and rocket themselves would always have been scrapped afterwards, and the goal of the whole endeavor was to get back as much data as possible.
They succeeded in launching the rocket, having it take off and reach max-Q and got valuable data on all that. That's the successful part. They also learnt some hard lessons on launch pad construction.
Then the ship failed and the test was aborted - and they never got to test stage separation, which they had planned to do as well. That's the unsuccessful part.
So, did they get the data they wanted? Not all they wanted - but an important chunk of it.
- AstralStorm 3y agoSo they say. Fueling data is redundant (they faced the same issue that caused the hold before a few times). Raptor 2 also has failed before with entertaining but expensive results. If it's in the same way, we do not know. Since they're not saying anything about the data that was gathered or was going to be gathered we're all going by SpaceX marketing. They might have been aiming for structural load data on the coupling, or might not. Engine relighting maybe, or maybe not. They might have been going after trust vectoring, or not...
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y agoThe max-Q they hit was much slower than the intended max-Q would be at, so the aerodynamic pressure was also much lower. So they didn't really gain any data about the performance at the real max-Q.
- sebazzz 3y agoRegardless, that rocket flipped and turned so many times while being top heavy yet the booster only collapsed at the very end. It think that is commendable.