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SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.
So the booster worked in that it achieved lift off and properly separated. Did the other stages complete their jobs? Because this looking like it’s only a failure in the sense that the booster didn’t do the cool we-live-in-the-future part of flipping itself over and landing.
The main focus of this test was stage separation. In that sense it was a roaring success. Also, looks like they managed not to trash the landing pad this time. So that will make it easier to get the next flight approved. But clearly there’s still a long way to go.
Also demonstrated the flight termination systems, for both stages, it seems.
It appears they got their engine development under control too. Every one lit and burned effectively full duration, on both stages.
So basically they’ve fixed every issue displayed in the first flight I’d say.
Still some work to do in the not-blow-up department, though.
It seems that Starship, the second stage, experienced RUD from the automated FTS at around the time it was expected to shut off its engines.
Which is an incremental improvement over the prior attempt. People mock these failures as though they have never built anything and have no concept that any step forward is a win when you are trying to do something that has never been done before. They got the smaller rockets working. It will just take time to get this giant one working.
Yeah but to get from here to a 99.99% reliability is a very very long way
Look at the Falcon rocket history. They started out at a very similar point, though at a smaller scale. And yet now they are comfortably human rated. They have landed the last 171 times in a row without fail, with another one coming this evening to add to that incredible number.
The guy at the helm is a terrible person, but this does not discredit the absolutely insane progress they have made.
What do you mean, never been done before?
We had satellites in space 70 years ago.
Delta clipper was pioneering reusable boosters in the 90’s.
SpaceX themselves have been recovering boosters for almost ten years now. They learned nothing from that?
I’m not saying it should work every time out of the gate, but they haven’t even reached orbit yet. And musk himself has said that starship being operational is critical to SpaceX and starlink if they don’t want the companies in serious financial trouble. So, it’s not like they’re taking their sweet time with these as incremental tests.
Fully reusable super-heavy rockets with multiple full stage combustion engines running on Methane have been done before? You mind sharing sources because I can’t find any.
Closest thing I can think of is the Soviet N1 rocket (about 2/3 the thrust of Starship) which the Soviets really struggled with and ended up abandoning, and it wasn’t even close to being reusable.
Didn’t the N1 have a massive launch pad failure that we still don’t know how many people it killed?
Can’t find any reference to anyone dying or getting injured, but in terms of pad damage it definitely takes the cake.
The first Starship may have put a hole in the pad, but the N1 obliterated it.
You’re comparing the world’s first fully reusable rocket that also happens to be the world’s most powerful operational rocket to old technology? The payload capacity of this vehicle is immense. There is not a single aspect of it that isn’t brand new, from its proportions, engine power cycle, engine amount, construction materials, you can go on almost endlessly.
These incremental tests are what allow them to move at this incredible speed. Traditional rocket development doesn’t take years, it takes decades. You have to consider that this isn’t a government trying to outcompete another one, it’s a private company. They are pushing the envelope with everything they’re doing.
What aspect of this “has never been done before”? Its a multi-stage rocket (NASA and the Soviets have been doing that for about seventy-ish years and the Nazi scientists we all recruited were doing it for even longer). The main innovations are material choice (which is debatable) and landing a rocket on a pad, which is mostly a function of having good computers.
Space flight is hard. That said, there is a very strong argument for being much less iterative. Especially when the quest for a reusable rocket involves constant spraying of wreckage across oceans and land.
Launching a rocket is even easier, it’s mostly a function of having a big tank of propellant and powerful engines. A big rocket ? Just need a bigger tank and bigger engines.
RUD, aka “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly”. I love how you can make “shit blew up in a way we didn’t expect” sound so mundane.