AND: Supposedly, any success after liftoff was just "icing on the cake":Congrats @SpaceX team on an exciting test launch of Starship!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 20, 2023
Learned a lot for next test launch in a few months. pic.twitter.com/gswdFut1dK
April 20, 2023
"SpaceX’s Starship rocket exploded above the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday, minutes after lifting off from a launchpad in South Texas."
"The spacecraft failed to reach orbit, but it was not a fatal failure."
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Lessons were learned. Hence, not a total failure.
Musk runs Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company. He has something like 6 kids. And supposedly doesn't own a house.
In the 1950s, the most expensive military program in history was the Atlas ICBM. It was designated as the nation's #1 strategic priority (even more important than thermonuclear warheads, which were less risky), so important in fact they started a parallel program (Titan) at twice the price to ensure that there would be success of something that could carry a megaton weapon by 1957-1958.
The early success rate of Atlas was something like 20%. It took hundreds of iterations to get it right, but every failure was not fatal, only those tests where telemetry failed or data was lost were "fatal failures". New technologies like this require failure in fact, it's the only way to figure out the idiosyncrasies of what went wrong. No failure, no correction, no moon landing.
If this was NASA, it would be curtains because there can be no failures - it is tantamount to losing a war, which is political poison for a govt agency. For Musk, this test is part of the process of learning.
That's the difference between real science and political theater.
Maybe it wasn't a "fatal failure" because it was deliberately destroyed when the stages didn't separate, as opposed blowing up on its own because of a system failure.
"unplanned, rapid, deconstruction."
That Was the term Elon's people used.
It sounded like they never thought this was going to complete the stated mission for this launch.
Reporting closer to the source is saying SpaceX destroyed the vehicle when stage separation failed.
I am amazed the stack stayed together given how the vehicle was spinning.
The fact that an American citizen owns a rocket company should excite everyone.
I've said good things and bad about Musk, but he's the man in the arena...
Nice to see competence and deliverables creeping into forefront of the space program again. Shows what can happen when Congress and the Federal Budget function isn't involved. This was an important milestone. With modern telemetry being what it is, they will have gathered a metric ton of data to work with.
It was a spectacular launch followed by a Rapid Unplanned Disassembly (RUD), i.e., an explosion. The second stage was supposed to have separated from the first stage, instead both started a spin.
SpaceX's is not afraid of RUDs. They had many during the StarShip development program. They'll be back with more development launches until they get it right.
"The spacecraft failed to reach orbit, but it was not a fatal failure."
Not fatal to the company, since apparently Musk has oodles of cash in reserve. Where it comes from I don’t know, as travel to Mars, or even the moon, is never going to be commercially viable.
It wasn’t even a failure. The primary objective was to ignite the engines and achieve liftoff without contacting the pad. The objective was a success. It is unclear, but it appears some engines didn’t ignite, but that might be intentional, as the threshold for liftoff was a tolerance of 3 engine failures. They cleared the pad with 3 engines out. That objective was successful. The flight continued through the period of max dynamic pressure (MaxQ) with the full stack retaining control. That test objective, much lower on the wish list, was successful. Stage separation failed and they couldn’t regain control after the planned flip, but they gained a lot of data during that period. Data that is essentially impossible to gain without a test flight, as labs and models cannot simulate that environment and flight dynamics. SpaceX obtained that data at a far cheaper cost than anybody else could do.
SpaceX did fail to fly the entire test profile. That profile was drafted assuming everything went just right. But the overriding assumption was that they wouldn’t get as far as they did in the flight profile.
I believe the expectation is that the launch would likely fail, and the hope was it would at least get off the ground and provide some useful data for future launches. This it managed to do. When you are testing rockets, the testing can be quite explosive.
The Fail Fast principle.
Elon runs the only profitable EV company.
Elon heads the future of space flight.
Elon controls how we communicate.
Did it impact the firmament?
They had a separation problem it looks like. But the first stage booster, the largest rocket every launched, lifted off successfully. I'm not sure if they had a problem with some of the raptor engines not lighting.
The plan is to continue failing until they succeed. Small steps.
Can simulation substitute for actual tests? That's what Boeing/NASA have been betting on. Starliner had several attitude thrusters fail, but, hey, they still had enough (this time). Artemis seemed to go OK but there were issues, I understand, that have not been discussed to any extent. I just heard that it went to the moon without any life support in test. The simulations say it will be OK.
Given all that SpaceX just launched a rocket bigger and more powerful than the Saturn V or the new Artemis. Artemis was successful where the Starhip booster failed but there will not be another Artemis booster until next year. Push come to shove, SpaceX could have the next Starship booster ready next week. Musk says a couple of months. I'll count on one of those projected dates.
A test flight that operated withing specifications and demonstrated boundary conditions.
The Ukraine war video coverage has better explosions.
engineers learn by failing
No one died and a lot was learned.
If the Crew Dragon survived that would be a non-fatal failure. I’ll wait to see what a non-NYT outlet reports.
Althouse: "Supposedly, any success after liftoff was just "icing on the cake""
Rapid iterative design/real world testing is a concept that flummoxes people who believe the last 50 years of NASA led development is the way things ought to be or is "normal".
Spacex already has 2 to 3 additional integratable units (boosters, starships) ready to go that have already incorporated the lessons learned and significant design changes from previous iterations...and all at very manageable pricepoints. And there will be more changes made as the data from today is analyzed.
See the history of Falcon rocket/Merlin engines development as an example. Its why SpaceX launches more payload to orbit than all other global "launchers" (including govts) combined.
Wasn't that the first time that booster model flew?
It's funny watching all the Lilliputians trying so hard to ridicule this guy's occasional failures in the vain hope they can somehow bring him down. Ain't gonna happen. He just keeps learning from each stage of such failures and moves on to developing more and more ingenious and ultimately successful inventions. Critical Rocket Theory in this case.
"Good. He never should've bought Twitter."
- The entire Left
If the goal was to prove that the integrated stack could survive launch then it is true that anything else would be icing on the cake. Move fast and break things is not a bad way to go so long as the things you break don't include people.
Not fatal to the company, since apparently Musk has oodles of cash in reserve. Where it comes from I don’t know,
Right now, from completely dominating the launch market using the Falcon-9 and soon the communications market with Starlink.
as travel to Mars, or even the moon, is never going to be commercially viable.
A) I bet you're wrong.
B) There are other reasons to go to space besides profit.
C) The whole point of Falcon-9 and Starlink is to allow him to develop and build Starships.
D) Once starship is fully operational it will be cheaper to fly to space on it than it was to fly on airplanes when commercial air flight began.
shit blows up.
If only Musk were properly anti-free speech - no one would care.
Spacex already has 2 to 3 additional integratable units (boosters, starships) ready to go
The prototype Starship used today didn't even have a heat shield installed. I believe this was the first launch of a super heavy booster ever. Expecting complete success would have been completely unrealistic.
SpaceX took a while to successfully land their first booster, but now it is completely routine and taken for granted. Flights to the space station with previously used booster and crew dragons doesn't even make the news anymore.
The biggest question going forward isn't even about Starship or the booster. It's how well the pad stood up to the launch.
Musk runs Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX and the Boring Company.
And at least two artificial intelligence companies. Neuralink and a new one called x-something.
He has something like 6 kids.
9. And one of his children died as a toddler.
If we had a rational government, SLS and Artemis would have been cancelled years ago, NASA would have thrown their support behind Starship and Starship would be operational today.
Instead we continue to waste time money and resources on SLS and Starship was delayed for at least two years due to governmental interference.
The full flight video is here, liftoff around 45 minutes in, RUD about 3 minutes later:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test
Aside from my wife, Musk is my favorite human being. He's dragging humanity, kicking and screaming into the future. He doesn't care if you don't agree with him or if you don't love him. He's too busy dragging everyone forward while replenishing our low production of children.
We need a handful of people like him every generation or two. While we've got the eco-cultists and Democratic politicians trying to mandate us back to the Dark Ages (seen Portland lately? Seen Cape Town, South Africa? Getting harder to tell the difference.) A couple of hard driving geniuses with ideas can offset the John Kerry's and keep the lights on, either here or on Mars.
I feel like such a slacker when I read about what he's doing on any given day. I'd better get back to what I was doing...
I think someone meant to write “total failure” and it came out “fatal failure.” Let’s see if they correct it.
The Drill SGT said...
"engineers learn by failing"
Exactly. This was a beta test. I think they would have been surprised if it went off without a flaw. There are going to be more of these. Until ever bug, flaw and program is honed. Then they'll put a person in it.
as mezzrow sarcastically pointed out..
NASA folded in 1958, with their launch, which failed. THAT, was The End of NASA.. Or WAS IT?
Break some eggs, Elon!
America is behind your efforts.
I lived near Cape Canaveral in the late 1970's. The newspaper listed the next scheduled satellite launch. Occasionally there were unscheduled (military or classified) launches. You'd hear them and run outside to see the rocket arcing into space.
Some of them were blown up when they started to veer off course or otherwise acted up. As a teenager, that was cool to see.
"The fact that an American citizen owns a rocket company should excite everyone."
I imagine it upsets the leftists, and I bet they have plans to rectify the situation.
Hell, they don't want us to even have cars.
I would like to see meme for Trump riding Starship rocket 2024 - a la Kong [Slim Pickens]
Satellite launch failures. These links do not include satellites and probes that failed subsequent to launch, nor does it include rockets that failed during initial development and testing. Many of these were ICBMs or launch vehicles derived from ICBMs, consequently, many failures remain classified.
People who know next to nothing, but don't know even know that they don't know, are the most disdainful of failure.
SpaceX boosters are designed to be reusable. When Neil Armstrong flubbed his line about giant leaps, he probably had no inkling of reusable rockets and what a giant leap SpaceX has on NASA today. The government's Space Launch System has cost the taxpayer over 27 billion dollars and there's no end in sight. And it has taken over 12 years to get it vehicle in a condition for basic flight testing, which is doubly shameful given that the SLS uses Russian-designed engines and strap-on solid motors derived from the Space Shuttle program 45-year-old technology. And it's only 30% reusable.
It seems the pad will require some changes. All in all, the test was a limited success. I assume there was a ton of telemetry to analyze.
For a more informed discussion, see this.
Give it up, Althouse. Some women are born to understand engineering, but you ain’t among them. Apparently you were too young to recall American Vanguard rockets blowing up on the launch pad at the start of the space race in the 1950s. Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White paid with their lives to learn lessons about flying into space. More recently, on October 31, 2014, co-pilot Michael Alsbury test-flying Virgin Galactic Two VSS Enterprise released a lever a couple seconds too soon and the space ship broke up in flight, killing him and badly injuring the pilot (who fell 50,000 feet and reached near Mach 1 speeds in his fall before the parachute automatically deployed at 20,000 feet).
It is greatly to the credit of Musk and his SpaceX team credit that they came up with a test plan that cost only money, not blood.
Now, if Elon could convince the Federal intel agencies that they need to get their people on the next rocket to make sure he's not spreading misinformation....
https://www.wsj.com/articles/spacexs-latest-successful-explosion-8c22da48?mod=opinion_lead_pos2
SpaceX’s Latest Successful Explosion
The Starship blew up in the sky, but that’s the way progress is made.
We need a handful of people like him every generation or two. While we've got the eco-cultists and Democratic politicians trying to mandate us back to the Dark Ages (seen Portland lately? Seen Cape Town, South Africa? Getting harder to tell the difference.) A couple of hard driving geniuses with ideas can offset the John Kerry's and keep the lights on, either here or on Mars.
Hear, hear. Agree completely.
the SLS uses Russian-designed engines
The Atlas V uses RD-180 engines, which are a Russian-designed engine. It still uses them, because Jeff Bezos Blue Origin keeps having problems with their BE-4 engines.
SLS uses modified RS-25 engines, which were the Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME's). The upper stage uses RL10 engines also of US origin.
And it's only 30% reusable.
It was supposed to have reusable SRB's, like the STS. However, the current design has the SRB's splashing then sinking into the Atlantic. The only thing reusable on SLS is the capsule, and even that may not end up being reused (much like the Apollo capsules were not reused). So functionally, SLS is 0% reusable. Also, the SLS flight rate is once every 2 years. Super Heavy, when operational, will launch twice in a row, so that the two attached Starships can dock on orbit, one will then refuel the other, with one Starship immediately returning and the other completing its trip to the Moon or Mars with a full tank.
As for the comment on "no inkling of reusable rockets"; when I left NASA as a contractor in 2011, nobody thought SpaceX would be as successful with their reusable design, and the best NASA had was a Boeing suggested flyback booster design that would deploy wings on the SRB's to land on the Shuttle Runway. No one took that idea seriously, because you still had to ship the SRB's back to Utah for complete refurbishment and refueling with solid propellant. Landing on land vs water didn't really provide much gain in reusability. So yeah, no inkling seems fair enough.
That test objective, much lower on the wish list, was successful. Stage separation failed and they couldn’t regain control after the planned flip
Yes 'the flip'
Why the flip? I'm used to NASA, where the burnt out stages just fall away.
gahrie: "The prototype Starship used today didn't even have a heat shield installed. I believe this was the first launch of a super heavy booster ever. Expecting complete success would have been completely unrealistic."
Correct.
I would also bet that Booster 8 even with mods might still be too close design-wise to Booster 7 and we are likely to see Booster 9 or 10 as part of the next launch sequence.
Still waiting to hear if debris at the OLM caused damage to some of the engines.
Still incredible to realize that Booster 7 delivered nearly 3 times the thrust as a Saturn 5 and still cleared MaxQ.
Poor gadfly. He gets confused figuring out how to open a pixie stix but he wants to play rocket scientist!
Why the flip? I'm used to NASA, where the burnt out stages just fall away.
Because this booster, the super Heavy booster, is designed to turn around and fly back home to land and be used again, eventually later that same day. This particular booster was being thrown away, but they were practicing anyway.
I was crying in happiness when it took off, so fine to know this is Mr. Musk's meticulous vision for Mars he mapped out years ago, this enormous reusable rocket is the prototype for 10,000 ships pouring out to Mars on schedules much like our system of trains in the 1800s. His incredible, reusable designs that land so magnificently back on earth are fundamental to this vision, and he has mastered that, and has scaled it up to the size he needs for Mars.
Thank Heaven for Elon.
Whether his rockets blow up or not, Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars is a silly pipe dream. No one will go. People aren’t exactly lining up to colonize Antarctica now, and Antarctica is the land of milk and honey compared to Mars.
Smilin' Jack said...
"Whether his rockets blow up or not, Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars is a silly pipe dream. No one will go. People aren’t exactly lining up to colonize Antarctica now, and Antarctica is the land of milk and honey compared to Mars."
There is a long list of people who want to colonize mars. We'll get there. Maybe not in my lifetime, but we'll get there. How can I be so certain? Because that's what western civilization does. It explores. Why? To know.
Smilin' Jack: "Whether his rockets blow up or not, Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars is a silly pipe dream. No one will go."
History is replete with failed predictions similar to this.
Those that keep calling this a failure, are a great example of how pictures and video, warp reality.
Science is defined by all of the glorious failures! Testing, more testing, a then retesting, to figure out the protocol for the next test(experiment).
Look at the R&D budget for a company like Bayer. In Seed corn development, every year they look at thousands of new varieties. Several hundred advance (the rest are failures)of the hundreds looked at 2 or 3 might make it to production.
In the next five years we are promised the worlds first hybridized Wheat. That will be an immediate ~30% bump in yields. That means we can grow more food per acre, with a nominal rise in production cost. That means we can take fragile ground out of production and return it to its native state. But there was has been nothing but failure 6 decades.
Whether his rockets blow up or not, Musk’s goal of colonizing Mars is a silly pipe dream. No one will go. People aren’t exactly lining up to colonize Antarctica now, and Antarctica is the land of milk and honey compared to Mars.
I will go if given the opportunity.
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