Sing "This is how we do it" ;)

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I think this was shared on ppot long ago-

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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.