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Space

Starship Is Stacked and Ready To Make Its Second Launch Attempt (arstechnica.com) 89

SpaceX's Starship rocket is fully stacked and ready to launch again. According to Elon Musk, the company is just waiting for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to approve the launch license. Ars Technica reports: That caveat is a big one because the Federal Aviation Administration is still reviewing paperwork and data from SpaceX about the first launch attempt of Starship in April 2023. That flight ended after about 90 seconds due to engine problems and other issues with the booster. The FAA has been reviewing data from that accident, including the environmental implications at the launch site and the delayed activation of the rocket's flight termination system. Following this accident, SpaceX prepared and submitted a "mishap investigation report" to the FAA. After reviewing the report, the FAA will identify corrective actions that the company must make ahead of its second test flight to ensure the safety of people, property, and wildlife near the South Texas launch site, which is surrounded by wetlands and the Gulf of Mexico. [...]

During the upcoming test flight, Starship will carry no payloads but will instead seek to demonstrate the performance of the booster's 33 Raptor rocket engines, stage separation, and ignition of Starship's six engines. Under a nominal flight, Starship will complete nearly three-quarters of an orbit around Earth before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, north of the Hawaiian island of Kauai. The launch date is pending regulatory approval, but it is not expected to occur before the middle of September.

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Starship Is Stacked and Ready To Make Its Second Launch Attempt

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  • by doug141 ( 863552 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @10:41AM (#63829736)

    "The failure of the SpaceX launch yesterday can be directly linked to a personal decision that Elon Musk made 3 years ago to not install flame diverters on the Starship launchpad. He overruled his own engineers on this design flaw, and admitted publicly. It's his fault."
    https://twitter.com/Tazerface1... [twitter.com]

    "Significant damage to the reinforced concrete pad structure was observed, leading some to speculate that debris may have damaged the engines shortly after ignition while the vehicle was still on the pad."
    https://www.engineering.com/st... [engineering.com]

    • by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @12:19PM (#63830044) Homepage

      SpaceX said they knew before the first launch that the high strength concrete wouldn't be enough for a permanent solution, but they thought it would probably stay intact for the first one (and they were wrong). It appears the plans for the new water deluge system were already in the works by that time. There's also been what appears to be testing of a new flight termination system that should be more effective. It's a matter of convincing the FAA that these new measures will be sufficient. I suspect that won't take too long, since there's apparently been ongoing communication the whole time.

      Within the field of engineering, practitioners have many different approaches to the unknown. At one extreme are the ones who insist on taking into account the yield strength of every thread on every fastener. This is best exemplified by modern NASA, who are adept at building single rockets that are unbelievably expensive and delivered late. But they have a pretty good chance of working on the first try. At the other end of the spectrum are the "move fast and break stuff" crowd who are happy to destroy a few prototypes to see what broke. These almost never work on the first try. Personally I believe engineers and large organizations get pushed into the former way of thinking because the public and our peers are overly harsh when they see failure. But in almost all cases the "move fast and break stuff" method ends up being less costly and faster in the long run. The first launch was a failure but it involved a lot of progress at the same time.

      • These weren't "uknowns". Everyone but apparently Elon could tell the launch pad wasn't sufficient.

        You also don't "move fast and break things" when dealing with giant explosives. It's fine for a fart app for the iphone.

      • by Spamalope ( 91802 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @01:38PM (#63830264)
        They were prepared for flame erosion from the top, knew it'd be good enough on that front. They hadn't planned for a center puncture allowing high pressure rocket exhaust *under* the pad jacking it up from the bottom. That's what broke it up so fast, then shotgunned concrete at the booster. I can't find a prediction/warning of that type of failure from prior to the launch. I have no opinion about whether it should have been expected, but only see after-the-fact commentary. We haven't really been in 'new and exciting' land where good an bad real surprises happen since the early 60s. (early US space program had a difficult time at first). So much is new so fast I'm really surprised so much worked.
    • by crow ( 16139 )

      Yes, there's speculation that the engines were damaged from debris blowback, though with the amount of thrust being produced, it would be hard for debris to get back to the engines. Also, in the static fire a few weeks ago, three of the engines failed, which suggests that they have a general engine failure problem. There was also speculation that engines failing during the flight damaged other engines.

      In any case, the first test flight had a lot of things go wrong, but nobody was hurt. That's really what

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I speculated as much at the time, and was modded troll for it. I wonder how is fans are integrating this confirmation.

  • I'll grab some popcorn and watch live. One way or another, it should be a hell of a show!
  • by mustafap ( 452510 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @11:39AM (#63829934) Homepage

    Driverless car technology has killed more people than SpaceX technology. SpaceX are doing things ok IMHO.

    Apart from putting up the "X" logo, that was being arrogant, avoiding local planning laws

  • by davide marney ( 231845 ) on Thursday September 07, 2023 @12:17PM (#63830038) Journal

    Most of the organizations involved here - FAA, NASA, SpaceX, vendors, contractors -- want Starship to be a success. The only ones who aren't all that happy are the Chinese and the competing US space companies. Everyone else stands to gain enormously from the success of this design. 330,700 lbs of payload to low-earth orbit on every launch! And the plan is to launch hundreds of times each year.

    Falcon 9 is fantastic, and it has single-handedly delivered 80%+ of payload to space this year, at a fraction of the cost of its competitors. But Starship is in an entirely different class.

    • I know, right! That's the equivalent of six falcon 9 launches for every Starship launch. If you're not worried about recovering Starship it can deliver 550,000 lbs in one shot, or the equivalent of ten falcon 9 launches. That's some serious hauling capability. I'm looking forward to some proper space stations being built in the future.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Given we have just learned that Musk disabled StarLink near Russian warships to prevent the Ukrainians attacking them, I think we need to ask if we really want Musk to be the one controlling these technologies. At the very least, we need some competition.

    • I see ULA was not included in your list.

  • I know a lot of the trendy kids hate Musk right now but I like his space program - it's the only really dynamic one going today.

    However...even I have to say "What the FUCK, Elon?" on the last launch.
    I believe the necessity for deluge-flood-cooling on launchpads have been a long-established fact.

    I don't think it takes complex math to see that force (plus non-trivially, the SOUND) is massively destructive. The chunks flying all over the place were ridiculously dangerous.

    Cheaper - faster- iterate....great.
    Obv

  • So soon there will be a porn movie with Blue Origin?

  • Ukraine had apparently planned a sneak attack against the Russian fleet, one potentially so effective that Musk called it a "mini-Pearl Harbour".

    Let's ignore the fact that Pearl Harbour is a problematic metaphor since Ukraine was launching an counter-offensive against an unprovoked invasion, unlike Pearl Harbour that was so infamous for being a surprise attack, kinda like Russia did, twice.

    Musk, after finding about about this sneak attack, chose to sabotage it [cnn.com]. But he didn't do it by telling the Ukrainians

    • Musk, after finding about about this sneak attack, chose to sabotage it. But he didn't do it by telling the Ukrainians he was going to geofence the Starlink connections so they could call off the attack.

      I call bullshit.

      Reporting says they were submarine drones. Starlink signals do not work under water. The frequency is totally blocked by water at the surface. No submarine can receive Starlink signals. So no, Ukrainian submarine drones were not disabled by losing connectivity they never had with Starlink.

      Former CNN guy is making shit up. What a surprise.

      • Musk, after finding about about this sneak attack, chose to sabotage it. But he didn't do it by telling the Ukrainians he was going to geofence the Starlink connections so they could call off the attack.

        I call bullshit.

        Reporting says they were submarine drones. Starlink signals do not work under water. The frequency is totally blocked by water at the surface.

        No submarine can receive Starlink signals. So no, Ukrainian submarine drones were not disabled by losing connectivity they never had with Starlink.

        Your bullshit analysis it's itself kinda bullshit. True, Starlink signals do not work under water, basically nothing works under water which is why submarines surface to communicate [wikipedia.org].

        If these were the same drone [usni.org] there's what looks to be a Starlink antenna on the back.

        Former CNN guy is making shit up. What a surprise.

        He made up specific quotes from the CEO of Starlink? Pretty damn bold.

        Gwynne Shotwell, Musk’s president at SpaceX, was livid at Musk’s reversal, according to Isaacson.

        “The Pentagon had a $145 million check ready to hand to me,

        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          That quote is (allegedly, the source is The Register) in regards to Musk tweeting that he'll keep giving free Starlink service to Ukraine. Shotwell is annoyed that the Pentagon was about to pay for the service when Musk tweeted he'd restore it for free. It's got nothing to do with (alleged) drone attacks.

          The whole thing is reporting on leaked excerpts from an unreleased biography, which is pretty nearly equivalent to "well, I heard my sister say her boyfriend's cousin knows a guy...."

          • That quote is (allegedly, the source is The Register) in regards to Musk tweeting that he'll keep giving free Starlink service to Ukraine. Shotwell is annoyed that the Pentagon was about to pay for the service when Musk tweeted he'd restore it for free. It's got nothing to do with (alleged) drone attacks.

            Good point, and less good point.

            You're right the quote looks to be about Musk announcing the free Starlink service on Twitter and temporarily killing the Pentagon deal.

            But it's still probably an outcome of the drone attacks. Musk sabotaging a Ukrainian attack is a big f-ing deal, like, enable the Russian blockade (and famine in Africa), ship based missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, and enable Russian defence of the Kerch strait bridge big deal.

            I suspect he had some really nasty meetings with the pentagon

      • Musk, after finding about about this sneak attack, chose to sabotage it. But he didn't do it by telling the Ukrainians he was going to geofence the Starlink connections so they could call off the attack.

        I call bullshit.

        Reporting says they were submarine drones. Starlink signals do not work under water. The frequency is totally blocked by water at the surface. No submarine can receive Starlink signals. So no, Ukrainian submarine drones were not disabled by losing connectivity they never had with Starlink.

        Former CNN guy is making shit up. What a surprise.

        Well Musk has now given an (idiotic) partial confirmation [twitter.com] lets look at his version:

        There was an emergency request from government authorities to activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol.

        Doesn't answer a) when was Starlink deactivated in that region, and b) was this communicated to Ukraine, and c) if it was communicated to Ukraine were they given any indication that a drone attack would be a line Musk wouldn't cross.

        The obvious intent being to sink most of the Russian fleet at anchor.

        Obviously, if the ene

  • The second launch will have more booms and autotune on the vocals... We built this city We built this city on rock and roll Built this city We built this city on rock and roll Say you don't know me or recognize my face Say you don't care who goes to that kind of place Knee deep in the hoopla, sinking in your fight Too many runaways eating up the night Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember? We built this city, we built this city on rock and roll We built this city, we built this c
  • You gotta admit they can build those things fast. So much faster than other launch companies that the regulator canâ(TM)t keep up (not that they are ever quick). Suspect the will be under a lot of pressure to rubber stamp this again (which they most likely will), which makes the whole process pointless.
  • They have 63 things to fix before the next launch: https://techcrunch.com/2023/09... [techcrunch.com]

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