SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight

[valine]

Altogether, it was a terrific flight and a big step forward for the Starship program. The biggest success was the survival of stage zero, which bodes well for a quick turnaround for the next flight.

Hot staging was the second big success, and Starship got to space.

The flight termination was disappointing, but the actual functioning of the FTS system seems to be fixed. That was a problem with the first flight and should make the FAA very happy.

[mattsan]

The second big success was all 33 engines working reliably all the way up! There were so many nay-sayers saying if the soviets could build those amazing engines but couldn't solve their flameout problem on their N-1 rocket that Superheavy was never going to work

[qiine]

Sad we didn't get any shot from the Starship onboard camera during reentry.

[sertbdfgbnfgsd]

Isn't reentry supposed to be the hard part? How was this a success?

[slenk]

I don't understand why people are celebrating failed rocket launches.

Apollo 4, the first time the full Apollo Saturn V rocket stack was assembled, did not blow up on the first attempt to space. That is something to celebrate. Now wasting millions of government dollars from subsidies, which in the end comes from citizens.

We should not be celebrating failure.

[modeless]

I'm disappointed there won't be a test of the heat shield, but it's definitely a successful test. All engines lit and the new "hot staging" stage separation was seemingly successful, despite the explosions later on. Can't wait for the next one!

[pixl97]

Scott Manley has a short up on booster engine relight issues after hot staging

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7LYw6gU65ac

[datameta]

Similar reaction, I was hoping to see the heat shield tested on re-entry but a successful hot staging was a huge milestone. Also they didn't absolutely devastate the launch pad thanks to the launch deluge system!

[the_third_wave]

This was mostly a success as far as test flights of experimental rockets go: it left the platform (which remained intact), it cleared the tower, continued on the set course, made it past stage separation and the second stage made it close to orbital speed and as such gave proof of the validity of the concept once the wrinkles have been ironed out.

As predictable the news media - most of which seem to have an antipathy against anything related to Musk, most likely due to ideological differences between their staff and Musk himself - present the launch as "a failure", "a flop", "a disaster", "a fiasco" and more of the like. This goes for nearly all of the ones I sampled ranging from the likes of CNN to places like Sweden's "Dagens Nyheter". As to whether this misrepresentation is due to them not understanding the expectations of test launches like these or in an(other) attempt to tar-and feather another Musk enterprise is unclear but I find it hard to believe that these institutions do not have the facts at hand to honestly report on such tests.

[the_third_wave]

Again to the downvoters: instead of trying to get an opinion counter to your own greyed out tell us why you do not agree. Let's hear it, what did I get wrong? Certainly not the twisted media reporting on this launch as that is plain as daylight, visible for anyone who cares to look. What, then?

[ apparently click that down-arrow again... ]

[alphabettsy]

Maybe it’s your own biases at work as well. The major publications I frequent including the NYT talk about it as being progress even with the explosion and seem very neutral if not hopeful and positive.

NYT: “The journeys of Starship’s two parts ended in separate explosions. But the engineers at Elon Musk’s spaceflight company overcame problems that marred the rocket’s first flight in April.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/18/science/spacex-starship-l...

[allenrb]

Worth noting, the first stage flight probably constitutes the most powerful machine ever successfully operated by humankind, no?

(A fusion bomb generates more power for a minuscule period of time, but that sort of competes in a different class.)

[Retric]

Depends on what you consider a machine, the largest power grids are more powerful. Though those are arguably multiple devices acting together not a single device. Most powerful local machine that’s close to steady state is probably Three Gorges Dam at 22.5 GW.

Starship is like a top drag racer where it’s quickly damaging itself in normal operation, but it’s the most powerful local machine that can last for over a minute.

However, there’s a lot of pulsed devices that briefly get to much higher energy levels like artillery or experiments that charge capacitor banks for massive discharges like Z machine which briefly hits 300TW.

[IAmGraydon]

Yes in terms of thrust, it’s almost double the nearest competitor, the SLS. SLS generates 8.8M pounds while the Starship generates 16.7M pounds.

[jug]

Wow, still, while the booster was lost that much success must have given them so much more data.

[jebarker]

The details of how they stream all the data down in real-time reliably must be really interesting

[0xDEF]

The engines on the first stage did well in this test. During the first test they were malfunctioning like crazy.

[CrazyStat]

Probably related to the tons of rocks and dirt thrown up during excavation of the surprise flame trench during the first test.

[gregjor]

What does this mean for the crewed mission to Mars next year?

[idlewords]

I'd wear a helmet

[hnarayanan]

It means I’m confident and signed up.

[Hamuko]

Short flight time.

[youngtaff]

Hopefully Musk’ll be on it

[ooterness]

https://archive.is/k459Q

[workfromspace]

This version seems to be incomplete.

Here is more recent and complete version: https://archive.ph/aN2dV

[rossdavidh]

It totally decided I was a robot. After my third "check all the boxes with..." I gave up.

[_xerces_]

CAPTCHA loop unfortunately, I think because I use Cloudflare DNS and archive hates them?

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/archive-today-is-failing-...

[mlindner]

"Loses" is kind of an incorrect way to talk about the launch. The flight made great progress and was just shy of orbital velocity (it was over 24,000 km/hr and orbital velocity is around 24,500 km/hr for a low orbit).

Keep in mind that the goal of this launch wasn't to carry any payload. It was to get data and further iterative development. People here, especially, should understand how iterative development works.

[radu_floricica]

Fair point - they didn't even plan a landing for the Spaceship, just a splashdown in the Pacific, so the plan was always to "lose" it. And it was well on track for that, it reached target height and already fired about 90% of its fuel. The only thing it didn't get to test was the heat shield, but there'll be plenty of other chances.

I'm sorry about the booster tho. But overall it's hard to consider this anything other than a great success.

[mulcahey]

Loren is a bad reporter

[Dalewyn]

I'm not really surprised at their choice of words, the mainstream narrative is that Elon is evil after all.

Even here, the detractors are coming out of the woodwork to complain about success. At least we get to mine salt from their tears, I guess?

[synecdoche]

The stream clouds created initially on launch were replaced by dust clouds. Where did that dust come from? I wonder how much damage was done to the launch pad this time.

[pxmpxm]

I must be the only one that can't stand the laugh track equivalent they keep pushing into their launch videos. Just reeks of tacky marketing.

[modeless]

A "laugh track" sometimes implies fabrication, but the cheering is real from live microphones in their facilities where employees are gathered to watch the launch.

[ralfd]

I guess so? I like it because it shows that thousands of engineers are rooting for their their work. Aside, the stream itself is marketing, they are not required to broadcast launches.

[wyldfire]

This launch was in Boca Chica? Where can I see the future schedule of launches. I'd like to consider attending one in person.

[jurmous]

They only announce it days in advance as the road closures are announced. Also it is good to follow the developments around testing of a new rocket to know how close they are to flying. They go through the same stages of stacking and testing. It will likely take months until a third flight.

[neverrroot]

In spite of this, it was still a great success.

[jetrink]

> SpaceX Loses Starship Spaceraft During Test Flight

It's really a glass half empty headline, isn't it? It's like if someone got bronze at the Olympics and the headline were, "Athlete loses to multiple opponents, fails to get gold or silver medal."

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

There goes another 39 raptor engines. Great success!

[singularity2001]

“rapid unscheduled disassembling”

[rurban]

Pardon, what is a space raft?

[gregjor]

I’m old enough to remember the Apollo program. Not one Saturn V blew up on launch. I guess we had a different notion of “success” back then.

[glitchcrab]

Yes, but the approach is very different. This more of a '(star)ship and iterate' way of working. There's also the cost factor - each Saturn launch was around $1.5 billion in today's dollars. Whereas the projected budget for Starship for the entirety of 2023 was around $2 billion. Once they start launching commercially then Musk expects a launch to come down to around $10 million - even if he's wildly out then it's still going to cost at least an order of magnitude less to launch than a Saturn. Then there's the capacity; Saturn could take ~120 tonnes to LEO whereas Starship will carry ~150 tonnes.

I'm no fan of Musk by any means, but you only have to look at the Falcon program to see how successful Spacex has been. I have no doubt that Starship will work out.

[allenrb]

Yes, in exchange for an investment that constituted a non-trivial portion of the GDP of a superpower near the peak of its trajectory.

There’s a reason words like “unsustainable” are so often associated with the Apollo program. It was amazing, but it couldn’t be a model for continued progress.

[martindevans]

Early in the development of the Saturn-V they had issues with thrust instability in the F1 engine (in the worst cases causing it to explode). They had trouble diagnosing the issue (and blew up some engines) before they came up with the idea of setting off a small bomb inside the engine to trigger instability on demand (destroying some more engines).

Do you consider that a failure of the Saturn-V program? Or do you understand the value of testing prototype hardware to destruction?

[robgibbons]

They also ditched every one of their boosters into the ocean. Not one Saturn V booster landed itself back on the launchpad. Different approaches warrant different metrics of success.

In SpaceX's case, they've done this exact process before with the Falcon to great success. In a few years, Starship launches will likely be a routine thing, as Falcon launches are now.

[hcks]

I love spending 1% of the GDP to make sure my big pile of metal doesn’t explode.

[dave78]

I think it was more that we had a different notion of how much money we were willing to spend on it back then.

[ben_bai]

Apollo was a one off government program, which was unrivaled for 50 years. And never even tried since then.

You have to understand this is a private business doing it on a budget and fast. Yes, NASA is involved...

[rossdavidh]

I think "mixed" would be a better term, but the explosion was, IIUC, the built-in "destroy this rocket because something is going wrong" system, and I'm not sure if we even had those back in the Apollo days ("not sure" in the literal sense, maybe we did and I just never heard about it).

[AnimalMuppet]

I have personally seen a video of a Saturn (unmanned), launching, that rose maybe half its height off the ground, stopped, descended back down, hit the launchpad, and blew up. That's pretty much "on launch".

But that doesn't seem to have been a Saturn V. What was it? I'm pretty sure it was on Youtube, but a quck search failed to turn it up.

So, maybe "not one Saturn V blew up on launch", but one of the Saturns did.

[bofaGuy]

Did the Saturn V turn around, come back and land, and then be used again for another launch? Maybe I missed that part?

[DoesntMatter22]

This is a pretty comical response to one of the hardest efforts in human history. You do realize the hundreds of blow ups that happened to get them to the point the Saturn V working right?

[gpderetta]

Move fast and break things.

Applies perfectly and seems to be working for SpaceX

[ThrowawayTestr]

Apollo 1