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Space

SpaceX Launches Debut Flight of Starship Rocket System (reuters.com) 177

SpaceX on Thursday launched its next-generation Starship cruise vehicle for the first time atop the company's powerful new Super Heavy booster rocket, in a highly anticipated, uncrewed test flight from the Gulf Coast of Texas. From a report: The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, blasted off from the company's Starbase spaceport and test facility east of Brownsville, Texas, on a planned 90-minute debut flight into space. A live SpaceX webcast of the lift-off showed the rocketship rising from the launch tower into the morning sky as the Super Heavy's 33 raptor engines roared to life in a ball of flame and billowing clouds of exhaust and water vapor. Getting the Starship and its booster rocket off the ground together for the first time represents a milestone in SpaceX's ambition of sending humans back to the moon and ultimately on to Mars - playing a pivotal role in Artemis, NASA's newly inaugurated human spaceflight program.
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SpaceX Launches Debut Flight of Starship Rocket System

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  • And... it's gone.

  • by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @09:07AM (#63464502)

    5 engines out on the first stage, separation didn't work. I'm happy they got this far, but they have a few problems to sort.

    • by crow ( 16139 )

      One of the center three engines failed. I'm wondering if the flip maneuver was done using just the center engines, which would explain why that failed.

      I'm also surprised they didn't separate before the flip. Perhaps they'll plan it differently next time.

      No word on whether they reached the needed velocity despite the failed engines.

      • by torkus ( 1133985 )

        From what I saw, it 'flipped' completely over 3 or 4 times so rotation didn't seem to be the issue.

        The flip is supposed to impart the separation force ... i believe in lieu of separation/ullage motors. They have multiple engine-out capability with a longer burn. While 5 may be pushing it, achieving orbit was a very low probability chance anyhow. Would have been nice to see a successful separation and ignition of SS either way...next time!

  • by GFS666 ( 6452674 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @09:16AM (#63464530)
    ...is that every time (so far) that SpaceX has fired the Booster Stage, they have lost engines. For the test firing, they lost 2 and for this test launch they lost 3 at the beginning which progressed to a total of 5 before rocket destruction. IANA Rocket Scientist, but this gives me pause and makes me wonder if there is a fundamental design flaw with the design of putting that amount of rocket engines together in such a confined space. To my limited knowledge, the only rocket to attempt this same number/density of rocket engines was the Soviet N-1 Rocket that was never successfully launched and major issues. Now I fully admit that SpaceX's quality of construction is far better than the Soviets, but the question has to be asked if the clustering of rockets has some major fundamental problems once a design goes beyond "X" number of propulsion engines.
    • by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @09:33AM (#63464584) Homepage Journal

      Falcon Heavy has 27 engines. They've done something like a hundred flights of Falcon 9 without losing an engine, so they may be approaching 1000 successful engine ignitions in a row (more if you count the boostback, reentry, and landing burns).

      It's a new engine design, so they have some flaws to work out. These were likely not even the latest Raptors they have.

      Also, with reusable rockets, once they start recovering them, they will be able to closely examine the used engines to find flaws that didn't get detected or explained by sensors. An engine may perform nominally but still have issues that can only be found in inspection.

      • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @11:59AM (#63465058) Journal
        Actually, these raptors are pretty well designed and working. The bigger issue appears to be getting fuel to all of them. But, this rocket had all old stuff, while the next version already has numerous changes. However, Iâ(TM)m guessing that the launch pad splitting up and throwing large amounts of concrete may have damaged these.
        • Those 5 Raptors got fragged right at launch, most likely by flying cement chunks. I'd be more interested in seeing the collateral damage done to the tank farm, the support buildings, and that one brave soul that parked their mini-van right next to the launch. You could see the windows getting blown out. Geico: YGBSM.
          • by crow ( 16139 )

            They could build things next to the launch pad for movie studios that want new footage instead of using the same ancient nuclear test footage over and over again. That scene of the house being blown apart must have been used in hundreds of movies.

            • Actually, that is a damn good idea as money maker for them. Put up multiple houses, dolls, etc. and let them look like a nuke hit them. Then resell.
    • by Hodr ( 219920 )

      33 engines working in a confined space, only 5 failed. Obviously that CAN function as designed within that enclosed space as 28 continued to do so for the entirety of the planned first stage. So there is no "fundamental problem", but as we know rocket science is difficult and spacex doesn't necessarily "over engineer" their solutions rather they try to cut things close and iterate until they are good. I would expect they quickly get these engine failures under control.

      • by jeremyp ( 130771 )

        15% of the engines failed. Is that really an acceptable failure rate?

        • I work with software developers who compleate year long projects with success rates in the 35%. They quite honestly can test their product every hour on the hour and they still send out products that do not clear the tower. That is the failure rate of a lot of production personal electronics per year that is not hurdling towards space. That was the expected failure rate from key turn to moscow on 1960s ICBMs. Please understand this is preprod sample that was going to be tested to destruction runn
    • A big problem with the Soviet N1 rocket was that they only used a mechanical computer to control the engines until the very last test flight. The mechanical computer was simply insufficient for the task of controlling that many engines. The final flight that used a digital computer was the most successful (lasting almost as long as the latest Starship attempted), and the problems that occurred on that flight could almost certainly have been solved had the team been given more opportunities to test (the fina

    • Thank god that you are not a rocket engineer, or scientist, or anything logical. Iâ(TM)m guessing you are a phb. Yes?
  • It is not a coincidence that Musk lit the biggest rocket ever built on 4/20. Then, when they were scheduled to flip for stage separation, it just kept flipping until they blew it up. Thinking like Musk, that could have always been the plan. The primary purpose of this launch was to collect data on flight performance, etc, etc. But I wouldn't put it past Musk to have an almost bigger mission to just launch and explode the biggest rocket in history on 4/20 as a pure stunt. The man acts like a kid sometimes.

    • Launch yourself to orbit on 420 day https://www.genolve.com/design... [genolve.com]
    • by crow ( 16139 )

      It's somewhat possible that was why they went for today for the second attempt instead of yesterday, but in general SpaceX is much bigger than just Musk. Operationally, it's more Gwynne Shotwell than Elon Musk.

      As a practical matter, they've been wanting to do this launch for over a year, and they schedule the first attempt immediately after getting the license. I heard a rumor that they wanted to launch before anyone contested the license in court, so they weren't going to risk losing their window by dela

  • by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @09:43AM (#63464626)
    Shuttle lost: Everything shut down for years.
    Starship lost: Next flight scheduled for a few months from now.

    The shuttle not having an unmanned test version caused the death of 14 people and set the US space effort back by 30+ years.
    • Unmanned Starship lost. Big difference.
    • by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @10:00AM (#63464688) Homepage Journal

      If the shuttle disasters have been on the early launches, I would agree. But instead they were well into the operational period. And the failures were due to circumstances that had happened before without loss of the orbiter, but the NASA culture got in the way of properly fixing the issues.

      The SRB burn-through was a known issue before Challenger.

      The second mission after Challenger was almost lost on reentry due to damage to the heat shield from debris from the nosecone of one of the SRBs. They got lucky with exactly where the damage was, and they redesigned the SRB nosecones but didn't do a full evaluation of they system to find the same issue from the fuel tank.

    • by crow ( 16139 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @10:07AM (#63464722) Homepage Journal

      An interesting question is where we would be today if the shuttle problems had been found and fixed without disasters?

      The shuttle program may well have been extended, and could even still be flying now, likely having had a major update with new flight computers and things like that, perhaps even a new fleet of orbiters. But we would still be using essentially 70s technology for sending people to space, with perhaps four to six launches a year. NASA would never have issued private contracts for launching supplies to the ISS. SpaceX would have gone bankrupt before achieving orbit with the Falcon 1. Reusable rockets would still be the realm of science fiction.

      The shuttle disasters were horrible, but they set us on a new path, and we're a lot further along now because of that path.

      • An interesting question is where we would be today if the shuttle problems had been found and fixed without disasters?

        The shuttle program may well have been extended, and could even still be flying now, likely having had a major update with new flight computers and things like that, perhaps even a new fleet of orbiters. But we would still be using essentially 70s technology for sending people to space, with perhaps four to six launches a year. NASA would never have issued private contracts for launching supplies to the ISS. SpaceX would have gone bankrupt before achieving orbit with the Falcon 1. Reusable rockets would still be the realm of science fiction.

        The shuttle disasters were horrible, but they set us on a new path, and we're a lot further along now because of that path.

        The ironic thing is the shuttles were supposed to be cheaper because they were reusable.

        Now after a bunch of years going back to cheaper disposable rockets we're finally ready to try cheaper reusable rockets again.

      • by Xylantiel ( 177496 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @01:57PM (#63465386)
        The shuttle was already "fixed", both disasters were the result of knowingly ignoring its operational parameters. Challenger was destroyed because the known temperature minimum for the seals in the boosters were violated and the decision was made to not inspect them, in addition to a set of seals designed as doubly redundant being left with a known burn-through, thus becoming single failure = loss of rocket. And the loss of Columbia was because the heat shield was designed to be inspected on orbit, but they just stopped doing it. This is all in addition to the fact that the shuttle would never pass the same man rating requirements as are imposed on SpaceX because there were large portions of the launch sequence with no safe abort mode. The shuttle program should have been ended even before Challenger in 1988 and definitely after because it was clearly being run recklessly and was far too expensive a design to maintain. It was a reasonable thing to try, but by 1988 it was clear that it would never meet its program goals in terms of expense and launch cadence. Just another reason NASA should keep launch services outside of NASA, since the problem was not that the shuttle wasn't a good test, it was that it was not allowed to fail once the lesson had been learned.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by Rei ( 128717 )

        The first shuttle launch was a success

        It was only through sheer luck that the first shuttle launch didn't kill the crew. The prep for the mission also accidentally killed 3 ground crew.

    • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @10:45AM (#63464842)

      The shuttle not having an unmanned test version caused the death of 14 people and set the US space effort back by 30+ years.

      No,
      * Challenger wasn't a design problem, it was a compliance problem. The contractor that didn't comply with the specifications they were given caused the failure of the Challenger.
      * Columbia was a human problem because despite grave warnings, management was confident that the damage was too minor to matter

      Overall there were 133 successful shuttle missions.

      What's really changed in the design process is our ability to compute absurd amounts of information. Our exponential computational trajectory has allowed for detailed simulations that would otherwise be impossible. This computational ability was instrumental in furthering our understanding of all the physics involved.

    • No the main reason the shuttle became too expensive was the number of maintenance and checklist items that needed to happen between launches. I mean like disassembling, inspection, and reassembling the RS-25 engine was almost as costly as buying a new engine.

  • I sometimes get my staging wrong too. They should hire me, I've dealt with this sort of problem before.

  • The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty

    How many Libraries of Congress is that?

    • That comparison is so funny, because how many people have actually seen the Statue of Liberty in the flesh? Well, in the bornze? When you do see it, all you can think of is "that shrimpy thing?"

  • by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @12:07PM (#63465102)

    https://www.laughingwolf.net/2... [laughingwolf.net]

    Just a guess, but it looks like they had several issues. Several of the engines failed early. The complex separation maneuver did not go to plan. Obviously the stage separation systems did not work to plan. We will learn more in the days ahead, as it takes time to go through the massive trove of data from a test like this.

    And that’s the point. That’s what makes today a success. The data gathered today is worth the cost of losing five Starships. With that data, good analysis, and good engineering, you redesign, refine, retool, and relaunch. Then you take the data from that launch and do the dance over and over again. It is an iterative process and if you think they aren’t doing it Falcon and other things, I’ve got a bridge for sale, cheap. It is the smart way to do it, and Elon is a pretty smart guy who also hires a lot of smart people to work for him.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20, 2023 @12:35PM (#63465188)

    People in debt for gender studies degrees are mocking a man who just launched a 40 story building into the air

  • by sursurrus ( 796632 ) on Thursday April 20, 2023 @04:01PM (#63465664)

    On the SpaceX stream, it looks like there are potentially two explosions

    One around 8 seconds, as the rocket is clearing the pad, there are huge chunks of debris that don't seem normal.

    And around 30 seconds, there's a shower of debris. It's impossible to know whether the other inactive engines were deliberately off or suffered damage

    Visual inspection of the central inactive engine, to my eye, showed damage (potentially a gaping hole) and a reddish glow. There also appears to be a big drop in LOX level around 1 minute. Seems to me that the stack had no chance of hitting its flight profile for stage separation, so they chose not to fire off the upper stage in an uncontrolled way, tried the unseparated flip maneuver for a little more data, and then blew the whole thing up.

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