SpaceX Starship Leaves The Pad For A Short Test Flight
Keith’s note: The immense rocket moved slowly off the pad much like a Saturn V. As it ascended it could be seen that some of the engines were not firing. At the point at which first stage shut down and staging was to occur the vehicle stayed together and started to roll. Eventually the flight termination system was commanded to destroy the vehicle. Since SpaceX makes these rockets in a consumer product fashion with continuous improvement – like toasters – they will have another one ready to go soon. Unlike NASA wherein a SLS failure would result in Congressional hearings, this flight will end up as another segment on the Starship blooper reel – one more learning event in a paradigm shift. More: Second SpaceX Starship Launched But Fails To Reach Space Update: I just did an interview on i24 TV in Israel. Here’s the i24 audio – and yes I refer to the Starship as a “toaster”. I did Bloomberg Radio at 2:20 pm EDT (audio) and Deutsche Welle TV twice at 1:00 pm EDT (audio) and 7:00 pm EDT (Audio).
11 responses to “SpaceX Starship Leaves The Pad For A Short Test Flight”
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100% correct. This was a test article, far from an operational system. The vast amount of telemetry received from this flight will go into improving the next test vehicles. Think of it as destructive testing on a grand scale. This is cutting edge engineering.
Destructive flight testing is not cutting edge; the Soviets used it, they expected failures during flight tests and learned from them. But it’s a great approach for SPACEx and I wish them good progress.
Destructive testing isn’t. It’s quite common in engineering. but a massive booster with 33 methane fueled engines is cutting edge.
Wow, that was a wild ride… congrats to SpaceX on clearing the launchpad and getting near max Q and stage sep, but they’ve got a lot of work to do. I’d say they’re roughly at the Saturn I stage… although there is no exact comparison.
They do have rockets close to flight ready, but it’s going to be a while before they fly again. The launch infrastructure took quite a bit of pounding. Huge crater under the OLM, the large vertical tanks were punctured and dented, undoubtedly more damage that is not immediately evident.
And they really do need a flame diverter and/or trench of some kind. A concrete projectile destroyed an NSF van that wasn’t all that close to the launch site, and a large sand cloud rained down on the Everyday Astronaut broadcasters 8km away.
Their sound suppression system seemed super minimal during testing. It will be interesting to see if they expand it after all the damage that you describe.
A lot of speculation on Space X blogs that the first stage engines were damaged by debris from the launch pad and that a flame deflector is needed.
Every major media outlet I watched or listened to today, launch day, made a big thing out of “the vehicle exploded”. There were issues that need to be fixed, for sure, but the explosion was specifically induced by people on the ground after staging failed. The vehicle did not explode of its own volition because of some catastrophic failure which is what the media said, or at least implied.
I think it was very unfortunate that the Space X announcer, in an effort to be ‘cute’ said the vehicle experienced ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’. Media and others took this to mean the vehicle exploded. It did not explode. It had engine problems and failed to stage. A destruct signal was then sent. An explosion was not the cause of failure.
The launch was a “success”, I am having a hard time regarding the damage to the launch tower and pad as “successful”. So much damage was done to the pad that cars a mile away were damaged by pieces of flying concrete. If people had been closer, there might have been injuries or worse. The launch tower and pad need to be completely ripped out and redesigned, with some kind of water suppression system installed.The ocean is nearby, so water availability is hardly a problem.
I’d be very curious to see the analysis of the pad failure. I would guess that someone ran a simulation of some kind that said that the launch mount was sufficient as designed, or they would not have launched. I wonder if they underestimated the acoustic load (amplitude and frequency of the pressure waves hitting the concrete), and if so, why? My lightly-educated guess there was consideration that with 30+ engines, the thrust load would be a “smooth” force applied to the pad below, but perhaps the pressure waves combined constructively rather than destructively to the point that they pulverized the concrete (not to mention being reflected back into the engines by the perpendicular surface).
The water trough systems under other launch pads are typically described as being for “sound suppression” but that somewhat understates the problem when the “sound” waves are of sufficient energy to shatter concrete. While the water absorbs a great deal of thermal energy from the rocket plume, the steam cloud itself helps to diffuse and dissipate the acoustic waves which may be as dangerous.
Cowboying it.
What if any analysis predicted the extensive destruction of the pad and (essentially) the demonstrated mile-wide keep-out zone for debris? Does loss of half a dozen engines to debris hits explain separation failure at MECO?