https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...54/156/700.png

https://imgk.timesnownews.com/story/...,h-300,fo-auto

Did anybody get reminded of an led flashight when they saw the new engine layout firing from below?

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682030316.jpg

^^^ Yes...it looked like a third of them hadn't fired up.
Off-brand spark plugs??

Yeah, I spent the whole drive home after work trying to figure out how the remaining gimbles would cant the thrust to compensate. :D
I think it was in more trouble than it appeared. That it got so far is pretty darn amazing. Personally, I thought the weight of it all would cause a structural collapse right on the pad.

I'm bummed I will have to wait several months for a follow up shot! :)

Hats off to Space X.

I've always had excellent results with NGK plugs.
I'll bet they used Autolites.

So a total failure/screw up that they try to spin into a win because it "cleared the tower"? OK....

Boca Chica, TX
 

About a year ago I checked out (on Google Maps) a satellite view of the sleepy little gulf coast community of Boca Chica, TX where Space X has their new launch facility. While the satellite image at that time was probably a couple years old it was just a sleepy little coastal village with a couple dozen homes and nothing more.

Looking at Google Maps now you can see the massive new Space X complex and the launch pad just down the road. The little community is still there adjacent the facility but I noticed, on Google street view of Weems St, half the homes have Teslas parked in the driveways. I wonder if Musk simply bought out all the homeowners.

Edit: I guess Space X did buy out a lot of the community:

https://nypost.com/2023/02/18/residents-of-musks-texas-space-city-rip-billionaire-for-destroying-quiet-beach-town/

It was a success.

It is twice as powerful as Saturn V.
They have five more built, with additional improvement.
It cleared the tower.
They learned a ton....for example a need to have proper flame trench. I reckon most engines failed due to debris damage.


What I found most impressive is that whole stack survived multiple somersaults...ith stages still docked together! Also, it kept going up with multiple engines out. That thing is built like proverbial brick house.

Old space laughed 10 years ago at hist Falcon prototype. Now he has market cornered and ULA/Boeing/Arianespace are surviving on goverment dole and playing catch up. Falcon 9 has 95% of the market.

I never thought to look. That is interesting.

Saturn V thrust was 7.6 million pounds and they ramped it up to 9.0 million for launching Skylab.

I saw the Saturn V that Neil rode being tested on the launch pad back in July of '69...

It was a BIG cucumber :D!

From my experiences in a game called BeamNG Drive, the forces of a long object doing somersaults can be quite destructive.

Per Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

Maximum thrust: Tf16,700,000 lbf :eek:

<iframe width="720" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FrGu1MLqIFE" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

That surprised me. NASA learned that lesson early on and it is well documented.

If you look at the replay you can see huge swathes of concrete being blown away like tumbleweed. That can't be good for engines. At the same time. High water table at Bocachicka is apparently making it very difficult to dig.

P.S. I just read that there are no separation charges...Starship needs booster to "flip" it away...and it must be hard to do if you loose so many engines. I see proper flame trench and redesigned separation coming.

But as many large vehicles, it is mighty fault tolerant.

Right. Why they thought "meh, we don't need that" is a little surprising. I suspect there's someone at SpaceX thinking "I freakin' told you", and someone else is thinking "I hope no one remember that I told them it was unnecessary." THe funny thing is that I'm picturing the guy that said "we don't need that" as Musk himself. LOL

About 2 years ago, before they started really resting the Starships, a local guy drove down there and basically drove through the gates, right up to a short fence. He could nearly reach over and touch one of the starships sitting there waiting for testing.

The point of his article was that right *then*, you could basically stand next to history because SpaceX was so lasse faire about everything. He mentioned that once the first starship was going to be tested, everything would change, they'd become very by-the-books, and you'd never have that opportunity again.

Sing "This is how we do it" ;)

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I think this was shared on ppot long ago-

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DKtVpvzUF1Y" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>

If anyone here knows Elon, tell him to build the damn flametrench, crank up the MTV theme song, and fly away. :)

So who cleans up the debris in the gulf?

I feel like we're living in the movie Gattaca (1997).

I'm guessing most of it sinks .... just like other space debris, ships, etc. and becomes an artificial reef for fish.

I did the google maps tour after it was mentioned too.

What I found really interesting was switching the map date back to 2011. Not much of anything there!

Makes me wonder how they will secure the mars surface on the return trip.

Some supposition:
They may have been done with that pad.
Tesla doesn't have a marketing department.
Demolition by largest rocket in history is gonna get more clicks than a no longer used pad.

I think the little icon in the lower left of the video was showing the engines that were supposed to be firing. Strange that at 1km altitude they weren't all going 100%.
The video of the actual rocket at 1km shows a different number of engines lit up. I wonder why.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682172282.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682172282.jpg

good catch. I wonder if that's "what's supposed to be running" or if it's a graphical display of telemetry that tells us what is running. It's pretty close except it appears to be a mirror image plus one that's missing or maybe/probably two.
Maybe the telemetry view is from the top down or the camera was in an odd spot that caused the image to appear reversed
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682176593.jpg

I suppose this seems more likely. Still, mirror image or odd perspective of camera, but missing 2 engines.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682176992.jpg

It seems to me that need for flame trench/water flooding of launch pad are things that don’t need a launch to test, being understood from prior launches e.g. Saturn V, and that Space X would have gotten more data if Starship had reached the planned altitude (150 mi?).

Watching those huge chunks of concrete put massive dents in the fuel tanks at the tank farm seemed like a real swing and a miss on the part of the SpaceX team.

The water isn't just for flame quenching. NASA engineers figured out that the acoustic energy generated by the engines was damaging them and the water absorbs that acoustic energy.

Quite the destructive force!


https://www.viperalley.com/cdn-cgi/i...51-jpg.155768/

I suspect it wouldn't have made enough of a difference, but I've got to think that rather than the exhaust hitting a perpendicular surface, at least they could have given it a fighting chance by creating a cone of some sort that more gradually deflected the exhaust.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1682287487.jpg

Still, I think without the water, they are just screwed.