Space X Starship Explodes

[Tervuren]

What he has is a tap to other people's enthusiasm; and thus their money.

Originally Posted by flatbutt

So, how much money does this guy have?

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

So, how much money does this guy have?

I think he bought Twit .... for around 44B .... which was chump change for him .... it's worth half that now .... 3B is nothing to him.

edited: He's down to a measly 200B ish .... he doesn't even miss the 100B that went.... Poof....gone .

Must be niiiiiiice

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Crowbob

Well, not if you consider the thing was also meant to be reusable. If it got >300’ then fell in the ocean intact enough to reuse: success!

I don’t know if that was a consideration in calculating what a success would be. It seems flushing $3b to get a rocket 300’ in the air doan make no sense.

But then again you're not a rocket surgeon. (And neither am I).

It could have been that the RUD was intentional. The main rocket had run out of LOX which probably meant that the thing was going to start working it's way down in an uncontrolled manner. I assume you don't want a very large, intact rocket coming down in a random spot that could cause issues for people under it or that would be difficult/impossible to recover.

How many of the other rockets crashed or exploded when landing before they got that to work consistently?

[astrochex]

Didn't anybody else hear the commentators saying the test went beyond expectations? Clearing the tower was the goal, the flight went well beyond that.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by astrochex

Didn't anybody else hear the commentators saying the test went beyond expectations? Clearing the tower was the goal, the flight went well beyond that.

Many folks seem to be missing that point.

[masraum]

Flatbutt's "miscellaneous stuff" thread actually has a quite a few posts on the launch including this post that I thought was excellent:

Originally Posted by porschedude996

I have a little different spin on the launch. I grew up by Vandenberg Air Force Base, now Vandenberg Space Force Base, and spent most of my life well informed about early missile launches. My father was employed by Lockheed at the base as a propellant engineer beginning in 1957-1958 and at some point a Site Manager with four launch pads. I entered into the biz working space shuttle after 8 years working aircraft manufacturing and flight test and field engineering before I worked space shuttle. After that went away on the west coast, I worked NRO Payloads as a design engineer. So since the first attempts to get to into space, from 1957 to 2014, i’ve been very familiar with space launch and development.

I can tell you that you just don’t get a perfect mission and one needs to learn to crawl before you walk, and then walk well before you run. It cannot be compared to any other mode of transportation development and the huge risks at any event. I see nothing at fault or going off track of a new flight vehicle. The three representatives were a bit over the top with their development failure commentary, but in this goofy social networking age, the uninformed information written by people that can’t find their gluts, need to bow out. No offense to those here on the forum.

My son works for SpaceX at VSFB on the Falon vehicles, so he’s a third generation missile enthusiast.

So other than the comments, the joyful exuberance, and the Rapid Disassembly comment, everything thing is normal during this development phase.

[Baz]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

That has to be THE most annoying audio for any rocket launch I have ever heard. Cheering for the explosion? WTF.

That's not why they were cheering.

Their objective was achieved.

Congrats, Elon and team!!!

[Amail]

Watching some YouTube video I see the launch pad was severely damaged. Lots of broken concrete, but the tower seems intact. Amazing to see the back end of the booster with little dots for engines! Weird to see six (or so?) blank spots where engines weren't lit. Lots of data to unpack from this, I'd call it successful enough!

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Amail

Watching some YouTube video I see the launch pad was severely damaged. Lots of broken concrete, but the tower seems intact. Amazing to see the back end of the booster with little dots for engines! Weird to see six (or so?) blank spots where engines weren't lit. Lots of data to unpack from this, I'd call it successful enough!

I noticed the empty spots as well. I assume those didn't light, whether that was intentional or not, would be interesting to know. I would have thought that if it was intentional, the distribution would have been more regular, but maybe that's a poor assumption.

I assume you saw the thread that Gogar posted about his VIP tour of the Shuttle launch pad from many years ago?

[island911]

Originally Posted by Amail

Watching some YouTube video I see the launch pad was severely damaged. Lots of broken concrete, but the tower seems intact. Amazing to see the back end of the booster with little dots for engines! Weird to see six (or so?) blank spots where engines weren't lit. Lots of data to unpack from this, I'd call it successful enough!

Yep.

Seemed to not move vertically for a good 6 seconds after "zero/launch"

[unclebilly]

So no astronauts on board?

[astrochex]

Twice the thrust of the Saturn V, yikes!

[Baz]

This might help with some of the questions here. From Wiki:

First orbital launch attempt
Main article: SpaceX Starship orbital test flight

After a cancelled launch attempt on April 17 due to a frozen valve,[citation needed] the Booster 7 and Starship 24 rocket stack lifted off on 20 April 2023 at 14:28 UTC in the first orbital flight test.[62] During its flight, the booster lost 8 out of 33 engines and had many of its critical components damaged, resulting in the vehicle losing control and spinning erratically. The spacecraft could not separate from the booster and the whole rocket was intentionally destroyed as it descends toward the ocean.[63] Had everything proceeded as planned, the spacecraft would have continued to fly with its ground track passing through the Straits of Florida, with a hard splashdown in the Pacific Ocean around 100 km (60 mi) northwest of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, having made nearly one revolution around the Earth.[64][65]: 2–4  Poor launch protection infrastructure (such as the intentional decision to not install a flame diverter or water deluge system) led to severe damage of Starbase launch facility and its surrounding environment.[citation needed]

[LEAKYSEALS951]

Watch the minivan

[GH85Carrera]

I guess the folks at NASA are not stupid afterall to pour gazzilions of gallons of water under the rocket to dampen the effects of all the thrust. Wow, the debris it made of the launch pad is amazing.

[KFC911]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

So, how much money does this guy have?

Tesla shares dropped 10% today .... made Musk forget about a cheap rocket !

Methinks he doesn't give a hoot about either one actually .... the $$$ losses.

[island911]

Thanks for the vid's

Thing is HUGE

[Steve Carlton]

[stevej37]

[KNS]

I think it would be incredibly exciting to be a part of that team, whatever one's opinion of Musk they're making history. You can't feign that enthusiasm.