5817

I have to think the employees were coached beforehand to cheer, rather than aww/groan, when the RUD happened, to send the right optics.

5818

I mean, you compare that launch pad to any of the NASA pads and it sure looks like they made the absolute cheapest pad they could get away with (or not get away with as the case may be).

5819

I saw somewhere a brief take of some pretty high speed debris cleanly cutting away the window pillars of a parked SUV, so yeah I think there was more launchpad flying around than expected.

5820

Giving away my age, when I was a kid, I built this Revell model kit of the Mercury Atlas lauinch complex. As you can see, it had a flame deflector very much like this, albeit on a smaller scale.

atlas

5821
5822

They have more rockets more or less ready to fly but they don’t have more launchpads for them. I suspect we’ll be waiting quite some time for Starship launch #2. At least they got enough flight out of the first attempt that I’m sure they have plenty of stuff to tweak on the rockets in the meantime. And I guess I haven’t seen an actual answer on the cause of the engine failures. Did the pad blasting apart damage the engines or were the engines a separate problem that potentially made the pad damage worse?

5823

That’s pretty crazy looking, is there a chance there was moisture penetration in the concrete and the launch heating caused vaporization explosion of the concrete? I haven’t ever seen pure heating or pressure impact reinforced concrete like that!

5824

The engine failures weren’t the problem really, though (and remember previous test flights have generally had at least one engine fail to relight). It seems to have been the stage separation failure that was the real problem. Could well have been damage from the pad, or something else entirely (I don’t think they’ve ever done a stage separation test before).

5825

They were down three engines from the start, that very quickly went up to five engines and ended up higher from there. I know it’s supposed to handle multiple engines not lighting but I doubt they intend for so many to fail. Whether that had anything to do with the separation failure or not I have no idea. But you’re right, that’s going to be another big piece for them to fully investigate.

5826

There were things exploding and falling off the rocket almost the whole time, separation wasn’t going to happen once the thing was cartwheeling around.

5827

Sure, I’m just saying it wasn’t particularly surprising to see them fail and doesn’t necessarily need an explanation in quite the way the pad destruction or the stage separation failure do.

5828

Oddly enough, the cartwheel was announced beforehand and is sort of intentional. They plan to separate stages by doing a slow spin (somewhat like with Starlink deployment). It should spin just enough to get some angular momentum, cut the engines, and then release the second stage and they spin apart from each other with no need for pushers or explosives like other rockets. The idea is that the first stage then waits in the the spin until clear of the second stage and pointing back towards the launch site, then does its boostback burn for reuse.

Something clearly went wrong, seemingly the engines continuing to fire would have kept the stages compressed together on the separation mechanism. (Edit: Plus they were going too slow and low due to other problems for it to matter, but any kind of stage separation would have been useful for testing purposes.)

5829

I don’t think there was a “separarion failure” per se, that was just what the launch narrator was interpreting based on the planned timeline. The rocket didn’t get close to staging height or velocity, there was no main-engine cutoff, and the spin wasn’t from an attempted separation maneuver but reflected the loss of directional control as more things broke on the rocket.

5830

Fair enough. I simply mean it didn’t even separate so the engine failures alone aren’t the big deal. I seem to recall Musk saying beforehand it could get to orbit even if double-digit figures of engines failed.

5831

I think cheaping out on the launch platform is going to prove to be a debacle for SpaceX. I think the environmental impact of the launch (flying debris and sandstorm) will have been much greater than they described on the environmental-impact statements they filed, leaving them open to legal action to stop further launches. Required mitigations (flame trench, deluge system) would have their own environmental impacts, and also might be very expensive. Building a flame trench above ground level (that’s how they are built at Canaveral), would probably mean scrapping and rebuilding their launch tower with its crane and catch arms.

They were only licensed in Texas for a few test launches anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if at this point SpaceX entirely gives up on launching from their Texas site and instead focuses on improvements to their planned Canaveral Starship launch pad.

5832

There’s a tweet. There’s always a tweet.

5833

Also, looks like there was more damage at the launch site than I realised.

5834

Elon just wanted a merger between the boring company and spacex to save on costs.
The man got a subsidy to skip generations at any cost to stroke his own ego, this is just part of the cost.

5835

Scott is such a talented science communicator. I learned more watching that 10 minute video, than reading twitter and all the coverage in the newspapers and space journals combined.

I suspect EveryDayAstronaut will have a good video but it will probably be over an hour.

5836

I believe the rocket just dug its own flame trench in a matter of seconds. They just need to pour some concrete.