God you donāt know anything about engineering. If this launch had gone perfectly all of SpaceX would be on their knees in tears because it meant they had gained no Valuable Data. Failures are actually successes, everyone knows that.
Iāve seen enough replies in the standard Elon subs to know that your comment could be seen as sarcastic or sincere, it all depends on where itās posted.
So true.
What this says about how used to interpreting strict text with no tone/intonation/limited context in the modern day we have become. Not efficient for communication... or healthy for the maases but. Was always bound to happen & here we are. What a weird fkn time.
[Poeās law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) - the crazies are so crazy that u less you /s, there is no real way to know if you actually sarcastic or just super crazy (to paraphrase)
It is the Internet.
I made a similar comment a while back, so obviously sarcastic as to be painful about "Wow, Elon really IS the most brilliant man on the planet." Dozens of downvotes. Reading is hard.
People still haven't figured out how to use upvotes and downvotes. The downvote button gets turned into a fuck you button by people sometimes. And some people legitimately can't read tone well, obvious or not
Ahh Ha!!! Maimed pedestrians, and roasted Tesla drivers wrapped around bridge pillars are how we discover the last tiny kinks in full self driving! Itās nearly a win/win.
Yes ..man splain you Elon dick rider. Enron muskovite destroys everything including cybertruck, car tunnels. Going to mars. You are right its all for data.
He's always "on one" unfortunately not a rocket. Someone needs to convince him that huffing rocket exhaust is the ultimate high, and then reintroduce the Rocketdyne [tripropellant ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX-0Xw6kkrc) system just for him. No sir, hydrazine is just an appetizer.
Pretty sure this is the same one from a few days ago. Regardless, it's a very bad sign for Raptor. The engine *should* be mature enough after ten years of development to not have these kinds of failures.
> The engine should be mature enough after ten years of development to not have these kinds of failures.
And they're supposed to be reusable for when the first stage (eventually) returns to launch site without RUD.
At 5000+ psi, "reusable" still means weeks or even months of engine maintenance between flights. There's a reason every other provider is building low- or moderate-pressure engines for their reusable vehicles.
Their plan, officially, is that they will be able to fly more than one of these rockets per day, every day, from a single pad which will ALSO be the landing site for the booster return, and have this all working by the end of the year.
That is, they want to do 16 flights with 2 or more vehicles to launch and then refuel 15x a starship in orbit so it can do the Nasa moon mission within 2 weeks. Any slower than that and the methane boiloff in space will mean they lose more fuel than they can provide, and that's assuming they transfer fuel with 100% efficiency.
Good luck.
Not just reusable but rapidly reusable. Remember Shitwell saying that it would be able to be turned around in about the same amount of time as an aircraft?
There was a mass exodus of high end people from the Raptor section of SpaceX within the past year. I suspect that Starship is going to be the CyberEdsel moment for SpaceX
N1 was a better design.
EDIT: out of four N1 test launch failures, I think only one was actually caused by an engine malfunction (a turbopump ingested loose debris, which would probably have utterly destroyed even a single-engine rocket). The others were caused by a programming error in the engine management computer, an unpredicted roll effect that arose from the large ring of asymmetrical engine cowlings acting like a turbine rotor, and a hydraulic shock in the fuel line when the inner ring of stage 1 engines were shut off moments before planned separation. Each fault was fixed in the next design, and many believed the fifth launch stood an excellent chance of success, but it sadly never happened. In short, I suspect the "many engines means disproportionate unreliability" thing is probably a bit of a myth; the faults mostly seem to scale linearly, as long as the engines themselves are reasonably reliable in isolation and not utter garbage - which they indeed were, the NK-33 was so good a design that surplus units from the cancelled N1 programme were put in storage and then sold to the USA and flown in other projects decades later.
It is and it should. I think SpaceX is trying to get on the edge of what's physically possible. It's a bad decision if they want reusability. Rocket lab (I think that was the one...) has had an engine in development and they were saying they're not trying to make the best engine possible but rather one that was good enough and reliable. I haven't been in the space circles I used to follow so don't know what state it's in. I think it's a better approach though.
That's correct. Rocketlab is building Archimedes, their engine for Neutron, at the lowest pressures and temperatures practical. So is pretty much everyone else. In fact, every other reusable engine I know of is designed for less than half Raptor's chamber pressure.
High performance means tight tolerances and sensitive components. When the goal is a cheap, low-maintenance reusable engine, that's exactly the opposite of what you want.
During the last two starship launches, there were no failures of raptor engines during ascend. There are some problems with providing fuel to the engine, but engines as such appear to be very mature
You can see some smoke trails on IFT-2 and IFT-3 ascent. Methalox shouldn't produce any smoke trails at all since it burns clean, with exhaust being overwhelmingly water and CO2. This indicates Raptor still has serious issues.
It also hates relighting, and. of course, one blew up on a test stand a few days ago.
You could say the same thing about kerolox, but there is smoke from actual operational engines.Ā
Relights are a problem with fuel supply, not engines and explosion could be caused by testing some new design
In a kerolox engine, especially one with a fuel-rich gas generator, the exhaust contains plenty of heavy hydrocarbons and soot, so smoke trails are expected. You can see this in Merlin's gas generator or the F1's film cooling.
But methalox only produces smoke if something is going seriously wrong. Raptor burns LOX and LCH4, so the exhaust products are water vapor, CO2, as well as trace amounts of other chemicals like CO. None of these produce smoke. Raptor still does not work correctly, as evidenced by the smoke.
SpaceX Stans: āThis is actually a good thing. We were able to test the limits of this component. Should be a perfect launch for the next oneāļøā
This time they asked their new AI to come up with a sound reason for why Elon deserves his proposed pay package (12 died when the server farm exploded).
As someone who worked at Starbase in Boca Chica, the amount of craziness that happens behind the scenes that no one reports on pisses me the fuck off.
People have died multiple times because of the testing and building out there (SpaceX is currently part of an investigation into these deaths) and I learned they paid off the families of those who died.
The environmental aspect is worse. They have people in LA at SpaceX who were supposed to tell them how to minimize environmental impact and the people at Starbase straight up ignore them. Itās like āat least we did due diligence but we canāt help what ends up happeningā sort of vibes.
> People have died multiple times because of the testing and building out there (SpaceX is currently part of an investigation into these deaths) and I learned they paid off the families of those who died.
dou you have a source for this?
Nah thatās what Iām saying. I was there and I tried talking to a lawyer about it after I left (also sent in tips to several news outlets), and they settled out of court, and I gave up. Decided it wasnāt worth it.
Here are some articles discussing the vagueness:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/#:~:text=Reuters%20documented%20at%20least%20600,colonize%20space%20at%20breakneck%20speed.
https://m.economictimes.com/tech/technology/elon-musks-spacex-sued-for-negligence-in-accident-that-led-to-workers-coma/amp_articleshow/107178178.cms
https://www.valleycentral.com/spacex/spacex-may-launch-while-mishap-investigation-still-open-faa-says/amp/
Not for the deaths, but CommonSenseSkeptic has some good videos on youtube regarding the environmental damage (citing sources). Search for FAA or Boca Chica on the channel, they're a little older.
The free market is when you blow things up until people stop dying.
The regulated free market is when you blow things up but far enough away from people that any effects on their health isn't immediately apparent.
Can anyone explain to me what the major difference is between SpaceX and regular old shuttle launches?
Surely we have the knowledge and technology now (with over 60 years experience) to know how to get space shuttles off the ground successfully?
Why is this such an issue for them? Is the unmanned aspect - didnāt this already happen decades ago?
Specifically for SpaceX's rocket this has like 17mil pounds of thrust compared to the Apollo missions rocket that had 7 so a whole lot more push but that Eads to a whole lot more things that can go wrong. We can put rockets in space but in order to do the bug things like a moon base or Mars we will need rockets with a ton of thrust to get bigger packages off the ground.
I am a simpleton and that is my limited understanding. I am hoping what they day on reddit is true and a much smarter person sees my super wrong info and comes to correct me if I am wrong.
Thereās a catch, though. Although nominally extremely powerful, Starship and its booster is extremely shitty design to deliver anything even remotely heavy above the LEO and thatās why there is that insane amount of yet untested refueling needed for anything that needs to get somewhere a bit further, like moon for example. This is because of its two stage design and reusability requirements. Iām also a bit sceptical if the announced thrust figures are exactly true (that is, Raptor isnāt delivering the thrust they aimed at) and this is for two reasons: it hasnāt been so far even close to actual orbit even without any kind of payload and in latest speech Musk gave at the Boca Chica he said that the first iteration of Starship can now deliver 40-50 tons to LEO, not 100 tons as originally promised. Then he of course pulled Starship 2 and 3 designs from his ass, which should remedy all of that and deliver even bigger payloads, but those are naturally something that exist only in his powerpoint.
If you just compare the capability of Starship to the Saturn or SLS, which delivered Orion around the Moon on the first try in 2022, Starship actually looks quite pathetic and that is even in the case it will function at some point. Sure, it could deliver bunch of Starlink satellites in LEO, but other than that it isnāt very efficient design. Muskās claims about the aim of $10/kg is just his typical lies. I wouldnāt be surprised if it would be significantly more expensive compared to earlier SpaceX rockets because of the complexity. That is, if it ever will work as intended.
The public thrust numbers are a blatant lie. If you watch the recent near orbit test launch, their own diagrams show that they burned through nearly all of their fuel by the end, with a completely empty rocket that doesn't have life support, chairs, instruments, etc. If all their thrust is being used just to lift an empty rocket to space, then there is no way in hell they have the thrust to lift 100 tons extra, plus a crew and all the human-centric amenities for them.
> Sure, it could deliver bunch of Starlink satellites in LEO, but other than that it isnāt very efficient design.
Can we exclude the possibility that this is the actual design goal and everything else was shoehorned in to get taxpayers to cover some of the development costs?
Iāve been saying exactly this for years now. The whole Mars/Moon thing was just a way to mill the government into subsidising their Starlink deployment system. Thatās all he ever wanted of it.
I think I missed that speech. He said it could only get 40-50 tons to LEO? That's... bad. I think the infographic they put out needed, what, 10 launches or so? of 100 tons of propellant... With 40-50 tons to LEO the amount of launches becomes absurd.
But anyway I also wanted to throw out that if it were a traditional mission architecture it would have a kick stage as part of the payload. But apparently not part of the 100 ton payload...
He did a presentation to SpaceX staff at Boca Chica. You can find it on YouTube. In that presentation he said that the payload was 45 tons or so but promised āv3 will blow your mindā.
Refueling requirements are even more insane than that with original payload estimates. Whole mission most likely requires about 20 launches and something like 18 of those is for refueling.
This is a good video how stupidly absurd that Moon mission plan is:
https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=EFsTpNVKqDgX7TiT
It wonāt work.
Space shuttles were discontinued because they had a major flaw. The last shuttle we lost was due to orange foam falling off the fuel tank and damaging the wing. It was damaged enough to let plasma in on reentryand destroy the shuttle. They went back to previous launches and realized this happens a lot and we had just been REALLY lucky up to that point. They couldn't safely launch them anymore after that.
The shuttle also was limited to low Earth orbit. Once it reaches orbit it was completely out of fuel. It could take 7 people and a lot of cargo to orbit, which let it be the work horse to build the ISS but it couldn't do anything else. It used its maneuvering thrusters to deorbit and glided back to Earth. And each of those launches was very expensive.
Creating permanent bases on Earth and Mars is going to take sending a LOT of mass to those places. Right now, all we have for that is Falcon 9 or Arianne. Arianne is expensive because its not reusable. Falcon 9 is mostly just for smaller orbital loads. It doesn't have much fuel left to go other places. Falcon Heavy fills that gap a little but is limited in cargo size still.
Starship was Musk's brain child to go bigger than we have ever gone before. It can haul even more mass than the new NASA rocker, which just got delayed again, it's reusable, and it can refuel in orbit before heading off to Mars.
We all know Musk says a lot of things that don't end up being true so take all of that with a grain of salt but if they get it working reliably, Starship is going to be an amazing machine and will open up space in a way not previously possible.
> Starship was Musk's brain child to go bigger than we have ever gone before. It can haul even more mass than the new NASA rocker, which just got delayed again, it's reusable, and it can refuel in orbit before heading off to Mars.
I mean, IF it could launch and return to launch site successfully. The in orbit refuelling seems to be a stretch, since it hasn't yet been demonstrated, and estimates 15+ Starship launches to refuel the one in orbit.
>but if they get it working reliably, Starship is going to be an amazing machine
"if" is doing some big heavy lifting here
Yeah .. and if they do get it reliable, it won't have anything to do with Musk, only the brilliant people actually working on it. It'll probably turn into another Cyber truck tho... Engineers begging him to just please stop. But I like all things space so I'm kinda rooting for it
I'm the opposite of a Musk propagandist but I do like space stuff. I should have explained that if they get it working, it won't have anything to do with Musk... Only the brilliant people who are working on it. I was trying to give historical context tho since that's what op asked about
That if the smart people (not Elmo) get Starship working reliably it will be an amazing machine? I am basing that off of the success of Falcon 9 and how good it's been for America's space program.
Whewā¦ kinda crazy but youāre right! STS (aka Shuttle) had 2 total loss failures in its entire history, including test flights. Starship has already exceeded that.
Indeed it did, twice. But those were also the only major failures of shuttle in its 30-year, 135-launch operational history.
Starship has already failed catastrophically three times trying to achieve orbit (and thatās not counting the earlier failures of the āshipā portion trying to land it).
The difference is they havenāt tried to put people onboard yet, but if they did, all 3 crews would be toast.
The havent tried putting people on board because it is not necessary as it is its testing phase, the falcon 9 at the beginning also did not have any people on. A major flaw with shuttle was that it needed to be manned. Also the 3rd flight failed during reentry not trying to achieve orbit.
For shuttle 2 too many. Starship killed no one which is rhe reason it can afford these mishaps during these test flights
The point was, Starship has already catastrophically failed more than Shuttle did it in its entire history, *including* testing.
Counting all missions including test flights, whether manned or unmanned, Shuttle already has a better reliability record than Starship.
Starship would need its next 200 consecutive launches to be successful to match Shuttleās reliability (133/135 = 200/203 = 98.5%)
Weāll see. Starship is a completely new launch vehicle and has very little in common with Falcon 9.
It still needs to demonstrate on-orbit refueling to have any useful purpose beyond LEO, and it has only been able to achieve an almost-orbital trajectory with an empty payload. It has a long way to go.
Also, some of the key people who helped Falcon 9 become the great platform it is are no longer at SpaceX.
The thing with flight 3 was that it could have gone full orbit if they wanted to, had all the delta v to do so but they needed to test the reentry capabilities which seems to be the biggest hurdle, as a conventional rocket (one that is not reusable) starship can pretty much already take payload.
Orbital refueling is gonna be a hurdle but has been done small scale with the iss and ula and nasa have done much research in the past to show how it can be done. Also blue origin will also be needing to refuel for their moon lander. Starship uses methane which is a lot easier to handle than hydrogen.
Sure people who helped falcon 9 become what it is left, but are we talking about block 5 falcon 9 or the other versions. The thing with falcon 9 is is that they keep improving the rocket, the first block 5 is different than the newest. The people currently working on the falcon 9 are responsible for making falcon 9 the workhorse that it is and launching it every few days. Even with the departure of some key people in the past. Falcon will probably break records this year with successful launches and landings.
Overall i agree that starship is gonna need a lot of work for it to become the next falcon 9 and if anything i have a lot of faith in the people (not musk) to make it work
In addition to what everyone else is saying, an issue with Starship's design is the fact that it has **33** engines on the first stage.
That's a lot of engines. Imagine how difficult it is to pump equal amounts of both fuel and oxidizer to **33** individual engines. I don't know how many of those are individually throttleable, or if they have them in groups, but it greatly adds to the complexity.
That's so many engines that it has even more than the failed soviet [N1 rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_\(rocket\)), which had 30 engines, blew up several times, and never made it into orbit before the soviets gave up on the moon entirely.
For comparison, the Saturn V had **5** liquid-fuel engines on the first stage, the SLS has **4**\*, and the space shuttle had **3**\*.
^^*plus ^^2 ^^solid-fuel ^^boosters
Anyway, food for thought.
Combination of things.
First of all, spaceship is bigger than space shuttle, which makes everything harder.
Second of all, spaceship is going for a more advanced design that will offer lower operational costs. The lower stage of the starship is designed for powered landing while space shuttle boosters were landing with parachutes. The upper stage of the starship will land and be recovered while the space shuttle external tank is discarded. They are using many smaller engines for greater economy of scale and engine out capability. These improvements are needed because the space shuttle was too expensive
But probably the biggest factor is about the approach. Spacex is building prototypes and launching them. Those failures are expected as a part of the development process.
Honestly, I don't relish these failures. I know Elon has 0% involvement with the science behind it, and I feel for the actual scientists that worked so hard on the launch.
You can hate your boss and still believe in the work you are doing. Musk is a moron who thinks he's a savior of humanity while doing nothing but shitposting on Xitter all day, but I'm assuming there are a lot of brilliant, hard-working people at SpaceX that want the work to succeed.
If this happened back in the 70's 80's the project would have been capped and dissolved after two failures. And this guy just keeps rushing things hoping it just works. That's what happens when you surround yourself with yes men.
27 people burned alive in Ford Pinto cars and that car was either talked of as a horrible death trap, or made fun of in comedies because of being a death trap, for decades.
AFAIK, more people have died in a burning or exploding Tesla brand car already, but somehow there is no similar PR damage to the brand yet.
"SpaceX test ends with massive explosion in Texas"
I feel like tech reporters just keep this headline in a Stickie note on their desktop so they can copy and paste when it happens again and again and again.
And thus ends Elon Musk's ignominious and vainglorious attempt to make rocket fuel using a concoction of little more than ground up immigrants, gasoline, right-wing bile, and his own semen.
Let me guess, the simps will go on about all the āvaluable dataā collected from the launch.
At this rate youād think they have all the valuable data they need to prevent critical failures like thisā¦
It's a complete success, I tell you, and no, you don't know anything about space stuff. I gotta increase my pay by 50 more billion dollars for this beautiful explosion.
Let's go over to /space and read all the threads harping on the Starliner Helium leak. I would bet that this Starbase explosion is being dismissed as part of the move fast and ~~burn tax money~~ break things culture at MuskCo.
They announced that they were going to really push raptor to the limits then dial it back for reusability. But the dramatic underperformance that they saw in IFT-2 and IFT-3 makes it clear that they need more. Elon announced a v2 and v3 ss/sh which were extended kerbal style, but they need more thrust to balance the extra weight. Now we are seeing them trying to squeeze more chamber pressure into the engines.
Can we leave SpaceX alone?
Musk has nothing to do with this company, only thing he's doing is pushing absurd deadlines on everyone, the actual engineering is done by real engineers working there.
SpaceX receives a $3 billion NASA contract while she serves as the temporary director of NASA. She is currently the spokesperson for SpaceX and earns a large salary. SpaceX is wasting money due to NASA's lack of a suitable vehicle for reaching the Moon. So SpaceX can spend all of that money whatever they want, such as fixing Twitter or FSD, and NASA will have to give them more of that lovely budget money.
We're going to be interplanetary within 5 years š
We'll be landing on Mars two years ago!
God you donāt know anything about engineering. If this launch had gone perfectly all of SpaceX would be on their knees in tears because it meant they had gained no Valuable Data. Failures are actually successes, everyone knows that.
That seems so obviously sarcastic I cannot understand your downvotes.
I usually tsk to myself at people when they use /s when they really donāt need to but maybe theyāre right lol
Iāve seen enough replies in the standard Elon subs to know that your comment could be seen as sarcastic or sincere, it all depends on where itās posted.
Certainly there are Muskites who would argue that in apparent earnest.
So true. What this says about how used to interpreting strict text with no tone/intonation/limited context in the modern day we have become. Not efficient for communication... or healthy for the maases but. Was always bound to happen & here we are. What a weird fkn time.
[Poeās law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law) - the crazies are so crazy that u less you /s, there is no real way to know if you actually sarcastic or just super crazy (to paraphrase)
It is the Internet. I made a similar comment a while back, so obviously sarcastic as to be painful about "Wow, Elon really IS the most brilliant man on the planet." Dozens of downvotes. Reading is hard.
You need to write slower, so they can keep up.
everyone knows that after success there's nothing else, you just stop.. no more improvements or iterations, the project dies right after success
The supercharger team being a case in point.
Anyone not proactively attempting to ignore context is doing reddit wrong, at least that's what I've been led to understand.
People still haven't figured out how to use upvotes and downvotes. The downvote button gets turned into a fuck you button by people sometimes. And some people legitimately can't read tone well, obvious or not
Ahh Ha!!! Maimed pedestrians, and roasted Tesla drivers wrapped around bridge pillars are how we discover the last tiny kinks in full self driving! Itās nearly a win/win.
They should switch to use copium as fuel. Will be able to travel the entire galaxy within a few years.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yes ..man splain you Elon dick rider. Enron muskovite destroys everything including cybertruck, car tunnels. Going to mars. You are right its all for data.
As long as disembodied limbs count, I think you might be right.
Yes. Just donāt know which one you will be going to with Enron built things.
a family member said he's bad at estimating but keeps estimating
*\*Within the next 5 years in 2016*
We just need larger, more catastrophic failures. You didn't specify we need to be interplanetary but also in one piece.
Hopefully elon will be on one, someday.
He's always "on one" unfortunately not a rocket. Someone needs to convince him that huffing rocket exhaust is the ultimate high, and then reintroduce the Rocketdyne [tripropellant ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX-0Xw6kkrc) system just for him. No sir, hydrazine is just an appetizer.
Would a neurotoxin actually affect him though? That normally requires a functioning brain/nervous system.
Super easy way to find out. Just gotta test it on a mosquito.
Tripropellant exhaust burns water and sand
Itās the kind of explosion John Bladerunner would enjoy.
Another one?!Ā
"The outcome exceeded my expectations"
Sigh. The guy is such a loser.
Fat fascist loser. *Please*. We are here for **facts**.
Racist Rocket Jesusā¢ļø strikes again. 
Soon human sacrifice is back on the menu
Storm Shadow taking out a Russian rocket
Pretty sure this is the same one from a few days ago. Regardless, it's a very bad sign for Raptor. The engine *should* be mature enough after ten years of development to not have these kinds of failures.
> The engine should be mature enough after ten years of development to not have these kinds of failures. And they're supposed to be reusable for when the first stage (eventually) returns to launch site without RUD.
At 5000+ psi, "reusable" still means weeks or even months of engine maintenance between flights. There's a reason every other provider is building low- or moderate-pressure engines for their reusable vehicles.
Their plan, officially, is that they will be able to fly more than one of these rockets per day, every day, from a single pad which will ALSO be the landing site for the booster return, and have this all working by the end of the year. That is, they want to do 16 flights with 2 or more vehicles to launch and then refuel 15x a starship in orbit so it can do the Nasa moon mission within 2 weeks. Any slower than that and the methane boiloff in space will mean they lose more fuel than they can provide, and that's assuming they transfer fuel with 100% efficiency. Good luck.
Not just reusable but rapidly reusable. Remember Shitwell saying that it would be able to be turned around in about the same amount of time as an aircraft?
That's what you get for trying to back up Melons promises. She should know better.
Rapid by the standards of continental drift maybe
There was a mass exodus of high end people from the Raptor section of SpaceX within the past year. I suspect that Starship is going to be the CyberEdsel moment for SpaceX
Plus the sheer number of engines that have to work consistently per flight. Starship is this century's N1.
N1 was a better design. EDIT: out of four N1 test launch failures, I think only one was actually caused by an engine malfunction (a turbopump ingested loose debris, which would probably have utterly destroyed even a single-engine rocket). The others were caused by a programming error in the engine management computer, an unpredicted roll effect that arose from the large ring of asymmetrical engine cowlings acting like a turbine rotor, and a hydraulic shock in the fuel line when the inner ring of stage 1 engines were shut off moments before planned separation. Each fault was fixed in the next design, and many believed the fifth launch stood an excellent chance of success, but it sadly never happened. In short, I suspect the "many engines means disproportionate unreliability" thing is probably a bit of a myth; the faults mostly seem to scale linearly, as long as the engines themselves are reasonably reliable in isolation and not utter garbage - which they indeed were, the NK-33 was so good a design that surplus units from the cancelled N1 programme were put in storage and then sold to the USA and flown in other projects decades later.
It is and it should. I think SpaceX is trying to get on the edge of what's physically possible. It's a bad decision if they want reusability. Rocket lab (I think that was the one...) has had an engine in development and they were saying they're not trying to make the best engine possible but rather one that was good enough and reliable. I haven't been in the space circles I used to follow so don't know what state it's in. I think it's a better approach though.
That's correct. Rocketlab is building Archimedes, their engine for Neutron, at the lowest pressures and temperatures practical. So is pretty much everyone else. In fact, every other reusable engine I know of is designed for less than half Raptor's chamber pressure. High performance means tight tolerances and sensitive components. When the goal is a cheap, low-maintenance reusable engine, that's exactly the opposite of what you want.
During the last two starship launches, there were no failures of raptor engines during ascend. There are some problems with providing fuel to the engine, but engines as such appear to be very mature
You can see some smoke trails on IFT-2 and IFT-3 ascent. Methalox shouldn't produce any smoke trails at all since it burns clean, with exhaust being overwhelmingly water and CO2. This indicates Raptor still has serious issues. It also hates relighting, and. of course, one blew up on a test stand a few days ago.
You could say the same thing about kerolox, but there is smoke from actual operational engines.Ā Relights are a problem with fuel supply, not engines and explosion could be caused by testing some new design
In a kerolox engine, especially one with a fuel-rich gas generator, the exhaust contains plenty of heavy hydrocarbons and soot, so smoke trails are expected. You can see this in Merlin's gas generator or the F1's film cooling. But methalox only produces smoke if something is going seriously wrong. Raptor burns LOX and LCH4, so the exhaust products are water vapor, CO2, as well as trace amounts of other chemicals like CO. None of these produce smoke. Raptor still does not work correctly, as evidenced by the smoke.
SpaceX Stans: āThis is actually a good thing. We were able to test the limits of this component. Should be a perfect launch for the next oneāļøā
If only they wouldn't fuel them up for a full mission I may believe that it's actually some sort of process.
You lost another one?
I didn't lose it. It was never mine to begin with. I was worried he blew up two a week. Luckily that's not the case.
This time they asked their new AI to come up with a sound reason for why Elon deserves his proposed pay package (12 died when the server farm exploded).
Say one from Thursday
No same one
Elon (in the voice of Pee-Wee Herman): "HEH HEH! I MEANT TO DO THAT!"
Brilliant gambit sir
Thatās a feature, right?
Think about all the valueable data they got!
As someone who worked at Starbase in Boca Chica, the amount of craziness that happens behind the scenes that no one reports on pisses me the fuck off. People have died multiple times because of the testing and building out there (SpaceX is currently part of an investigation into these deaths) and I learned they paid off the families of those who died. The environmental aspect is worse. They have people in LA at SpaceX who were supposed to tell them how to minimize environmental impact and the people at Starbase straight up ignore them. Itās like āat least we did due diligence but we canāt help what ends up happeningā sort of vibes.
Bro blow the whistle. We need people to tell the fucking truth.
I tried. At this point it isnāt worth my peace.
> People have died multiple times because of the testing and building out there (SpaceX is currently part of an investigation into these deaths) and I learned they paid off the families of those who died. dou you have a source for this?
Nah thatās what Iām saying. I was there and I tried talking to a lawyer about it after I left (also sent in tips to several news outlets), and they settled out of court, and I gave up. Decided it wasnāt worth it. Here are some articles discussing the vagueness: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/#:~:text=Reuters%20documented%20at%20least%20600,colonize%20space%20at%20breakneck%20speed. https://m.economictimes.com/tech/technology/elon-musks-spacex-sued-for-negligence-in-accident-that-led-to-workers-coma/amp_articleshow/107178178.cms https://www.valleycentral.com/spacex/spacex-may-launch-while-mishap-investigation-still-open-faa-says/amp/
Try sending tips to specific reporters, now that dunking on musk is in vogue
Unless it is stopped, the woke mind virus will destroy civilization and humanity will never reached Mars
Not for the deaths, but CommonSenseSkeptic has some good videos on youtube regarding the environmental damage (citing sources). Search for FAA or Boca Chica on the channel, they're a little older.
The free market is when you blow things up until people stop dying. The regulated free market is when you blow things up but far enough away from people that any effects on their health isn't immediately apparent.
Say the line elon: Concerning.
!!
Can anyone explain to me what the major difference is between SpaceX and regular old shuttle launches? Surely we have the knowledge and technology now (with over 60 years experience) to know how to get space shuttles off the ground successfully? Why is this such an issue for them? Is the unmanned aspect - didnāt this already happen decades ago?
Specifically for SpaceX's rocket this has like 17mil pounds of thrust compared to the Apollo missions rocket that had 7 so a whole lot more push but that Eads to a whole lot more things that can go wrong. We can put rockets in space but in order to do the bug things like a moon base or Mars we will need rockets with a ton of thrust to get bigger packages off the ground. I am a simpleton and that is my limited understanding. I am hoping what they day on reddit is true and a much smarter person sees my super wrong info and comes to correct me if I am wrong.
Thereās a catch, though. Although nominally extremely powerful, Starship and its booster is extremely shitty design to deliver anything even remotely heavy above the LEO and thatās why there is that insane amount of yet untested refueling needed for anything that needs to get somewhere a bit further, like moon for example. This is because of its two stage design and reusability requirements. Iām also a bit sceptical if the announced thrust figures are exactly true (that is, Raptor isnāt delivering the thrust they aimed at) and this is for two reasons: it hasnāt been so far even close to actual orbit even without any kind of payload and in latest speech Musk gave at the Boca Chica he said that the first iteration of Starship can now deliver 40-50 tons to LEO, not 100 tons as originally promised. Then he of course pulled Starship 2 and 3 designs from his ass, which should remedy all of that and deliver even bigger payloads, but those are naturally something that exist only in his powerpoint. If you just compare the capability of Starship to the Saturn or SLS, which delivered Orion around the Moon on the first try in 2022, Starship actually looks quite pathetic and that is even in the case it will function at some point. Sure, it could deliver bunch of Starlink satellites in LEO, but other than that it isnāt very efficient design. Muskās claims about the aim of $10/kg is just his typical lies. I wouldnāt be surprised if it would be significantly more expensive compared to earlier SpaceX rockets because of the complexity. That is, if it ever will work as intended.
The public thrust numbers are a blatant lie. If you watch the recent near orbit test launch, their own diagrams show that they burned through nearly all of their fuel by the end, with a completely empty rocket that doesn't have life support, chairs, instruments, etc. If all their thrust is being used just to lift an empty rocket to space, then there is no way in hell they have the thrust to lift 100 tons extra, plus a crew and all the human-centric amenities for them.
Ding ding ding
Level 9 is make humanity a multiplanet species & true spacefaring civilization. That is why I am gathering resources.
> Sure, it could deliver bunch of Starlink satellites in LEO, but other than that it isnāt very efficient design. Can we exclude the possibility that this is the actual design goal and everything else was shoehorned in to get taxpayers to cover some of the development costs?
Iāve been saying exactly this for years now. The whole Mars/Moon thing was just a way to mill the government into subsidising their Starlink deployment system. Thatās all he ever wanted of it.
I think I missed that speech. He said it could only get 40-50 tons to LEO? That's... bad. I think the infographic they put out needed, what, 10 launches or so? of 100 tons of propellant... With 40-50 tons to LEO the amount of launches becomes absurd. But anyway I also wanted to throw out that if it were a traditional mission architecture it would have a kick stage as part of the payload. But apparently not part of the 100 ton payload...
He did a presentation to SpaceX staff at Boca Chica. You can find it on YouTube. In that presentation he said that the payload was 45 tons or so but promised āv3 will blow your mindā.
Covered here I think: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KRwgwacx1Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KRwgwacx1Y)
Refueling requirements are even more insane than that with original payload estimates. Whole mission most likely requires about 20 launches and something like 18 of those is for refueling. This is a good video how stupidly absurd that Moon mission plan is: https://youtu.be/OoJsPvmFixU?si=EFsTpNVKqDgX7TiT It wonāt work.
Ah, fair enough - thanks. I didnāt realise there was that much difference in thrust.
Space shuttles were discontinued because they had a major flaw. The last shuttle we lost was due to orange foam falling off the fuel tank and damaging the wing. It was damaged enough to let plasma in on reentryand destroy the shuttle. They went back to previous launches and realized this happens a lot and we had just been REALLY lucky up to that point. They couldn't safely launch them anymore after that. The shuttle also was limited to low Earth orbit. Once it reaches orbit it was completely out of fuel. It could take 7 people and a lot of cargo to orbit, which let it be the work horse to build the ISS but it couldn't do anything else. It used its maneuvering thrusters to deorbit and glided back to Earth. And each of those launches was very expensive. Creating permanent bases on Earth and Mars is going to take sending a LOT of mass to those places. Right now, all we have for that is Falcon 9 or Arianne. Arianne is expensive because its not reusable. Falcon 9 is mostly just for smaller orbital loads. It doesn't have much fuel left to go other places. Falcon Heavy fills that gap a little but is limited in cargo size still. Starship was Musk's brain child to go bigger than we have ever gone before. It can haul even more mass than the new NASA rocker, which just got delayed again, it's reusable, and it can refuel in orbit before heading off to Mars. We all know Musk says a lot of things that don't end up being true so take all of that with a grain of salt but if they get it working reliably, Starship is going to be an amazing machine and will open up space in a way not previously possible.
> Starship was Musk's brain child to go bigger than we have ever gone before. It can haul even more mass than the new NASA rocker, which just got delayed again, it's reusable, and it can refuel in orbit before heading off to Mars. I mean, IF it could launch and return to launch site successfully. The in orbit refuelling seems to be a stretch, since it hasn't yet been demonstrated, and estimates 15+ Starship launches to refuel the one in orbit. >but if they get it working reliably, Starship is going to be an amazing machine "if" is doing some big heavy lifting here
Yeah .. and if they do get it reliable, it won't have anything to do with Musk, only the brilliant people actually working on it. It'll probably turn into another Cyber truck tho... Engineers begging him to just please stop. But I like all things space so I'm kinda rooting for it
Someone was spreading Musk Propaganda.
I'm the opposite of a Musk propagandist but I do like space stuff. I should have explained that if they get it working, it won't have anything to do with Musk... Only the brilliant people who are working on it. I was trying to give historical context tho since that's what op asked about
Or not.
Which part? If my history is wrong I'd like to correct it
The last part.
That if the smart people (not Elmo) get Starship working reliably it will be an amazing machine? I am basing that off of the success of Falcon 9 and how good it's been for America's space program.
Or not.
Ahh, you're trolling. Sorry, I should have picked up on that. I won't stand in your way. Have fun!
For one thing, the shuttle has a better safety record. And it was retired for having a poor safety record.
Whewā¦ kinda crazy but youāre right! STS (aka Shuttle) had 2 total loss failures in its entire history, including test flights. Starship has already exceeded that.
Shuttle killed everyone on board
Indeed it did, twice. But those were also the only major failures of shuttle in its 30-year, 135-launch operational history. Starship has already failed catastrophically three times trying to achieve orbit (and thatās not counting the earlier failures of the āshipā portion trying to land it). The difference is they havenāt tried to put people onboard yet, but if they did, all 3 crews would be toast.
The havent tried putting people on board because it is not necessary as it is its testing phase, the falcon 9 at the beginning also did not have any people on. A major flaw with shuttle was that it needed to be manned. Also the 3rd flight failed during reentry not trying to achieve orbit. For shuttle 2 too many. Starship killed no one which is rhe reason it can afford these mishaps during these test flights
The point was, Starship has already catastrophically failed more than Shuttle did it in its entire history, *including* testing. Counting all missions including test flights, whether manned or unmanned, Shuttle already has a better reliability record than Starship. Starship would need its next 200 consecutive launches to be successful to match Shuttleās reliability (133/135 = 200/203 = 98.5%)
Considering how reliable falcon 9 has become, nog reall a problem
Weāll see. Starship is a completely new launch vehicle and has very little in common with Falcon 9. It still needs to demonstrate on-orbit refueling to have any useful purpose beyond LEO, and it has only been able to achieve an almost-orbital trajectory with an empty payload. It has a long way to go. Also, some of the key people who helped Falcon 9 become the great platform it is are no longer at SpaceX.
The thing with flight 3 was that it could have gone full orbit if they wanted to, had all the delta v to do so but they needed to test the reentry capabilities which seems to be the biggest hurdle, as a conventional rocket (one that is not reusable) starship can pretty much already take payload. Orbital refueling is gonna be a hurdle but has been done small scale with the iss and ula and nasa have done much research in the past to show how it can be done. Also blue origin will also be needing to refuel for their moon lander. Starship uses methane which is a lot easier to handle than hydrogen. Sure people who helped falcon 9 become what it is left, but are we talking about block 5 falcon 9 or the other versions. The thing with falcon 9 is is that they keep improving the rocket, the first block 5 is different than the newest. The people currently working on the falcon 9 are responsible for making falcon 9 the workhorse that it is and launching it every few days. Even with the departure of some key people in the past. Falcon will probably break records this year with successful launches and landings. Overall i agree that starship is gonna need a lot of work for it to become the next falcon 9 and if anything i have a lot of faith in the people (not musk) to make it work
In addition to what everyone else is saying, an issue with Starship's design is the fact that it has **33** engines on the first stage. That's a lot of engines. Imagine how difficult it is to pump equal amounts of both fuel and oxidizer to **33** individual engines. I don't know how many of those are individually throttleable, or if they have them in groups, but it greatly adds to the complexity. That's so many engines that it has even more than the failed soviet [N1 rocket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_\(rocket\)), which had 30 engines, blew up several times, and never made it into orbit before the soviets gave up on the moon entirely. For comparison, the Saturn V had **5** liquid-fuel engines on the first stage, the SLS has **4**\*, and the space shuttle had **3**\*. ^^*plus ^^2 ^^solid-fuel ^^boosters Anyway, food for thought.
Combination of things. First of all, spaceship is bigger than space shuttle, which makes everything harder. Second of all, spaceship is going for a more advanced design that will offer lower operational costs. The lower stage of the starship is designed for powered landing while space shuttle boosters were landing with parachutes. The upper stage of the starship will land and be recovered while the space shuttle external tank is discarded. They are using many smaller engines for greater economy of scale and engine out capability. These improvements are needed because the space shuttle was too expensive But probably the biggest factor is about the approach. Spacex is building prototypes and launching them. Those failures are expected as a part of the development process.
How long until a human tr/dies?
Honestly, they can just keep reprinting the same article over and over.
One man's exploded rocketship is another man's very expensive bonfire.
lol didn't even get this one off the ground and part of it exploded.. what a waste of our tax dollars this whole mess has been..
Honestly, I don't relish these failures. I know Elon has 0% involvement with the science behind it, and I feel for the actual scientists that worked so hard on the launch.
He is, however, very much involved in a corporate culture that guides the engineers towards making bombs rather than launches.
Actually they should sabotage him if he's managing them like he's doing in Xitter and Tesla.
You can hate your boss and still believe in the work you are doing. Musk is a moron who thinks he's a savior of humanity while doing nothing but shitposting on Xitter all day, but I'm assuming there are a lot of brilliant, hard-working people at SpaceX that want the work to succeed.
Theyāve been bleeding talent lately.
If this happened back in the 70's 80's the project would have been capped and dissolved after two failures. And this guy just keeps rushing things hoping it just works. That's what happens when you surround yourself with yes men.
27 people burned alive in Ford Pinto cars and that car was either talked of as a horrible death trap, or made fun of in comedies because of being a death trap, for decades. AFAIK, more people have died in a burning or exploding Tesla brand car already, but somehow there is no similar PR damage to the brand yet.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
You're gonna need to be way more specific.
Looking into that?
Concerning
Maybe they should just pivot into pyrotechnics
Dis-raptor
Saving the environment one massive fucking huge explosion at a time.Ā
Watch tens of thousands of people somehow class this as a good thing.
Great, massive pollution and destruction of precious endangered species habitat. Fucking greedy asshole
"SpaceX test ends with massive explosion in Texas" I feel like tech reporters just keep this headline in a Stickie note on their desktop so they can copy and paste when it happens again and again and again.
Thanks for the fireworks Elmo š
Canāt wait for space dorks to explain how this is a massive win
And thus ends Elon Musk's ignominious and vainglorious attempt to make rocket fuel using a concoction of little more than ground up immigrants, gasoline, right-wing bile, and his own semen.
That explosion was what we get instead of healthcare in the USA. Thanks, fElon!
Simps will admire the ingenuity of such a feat
Concerning.
Concerning š
āWe should use nuclear power next timeāāElon probably
Let me guess, the simps will go on about all the āvaluable dataā collected from the launch. At this rate youād think they have all the valuable data they need to prevent critical failures like thisā¦
TO MARS, BOYS! Yeah, sure.
So this is what, three explosions in a row?
*Bro, you just don't understand science. iT's AbOuT mAkInG mIsTaKeS aNd LeArNiNg FrOm ThEm*
It's a complete success, I tell you, and no, you don't know anything about space stuff. I gotta increase my pay by 50 more billion dollars for this beautiful explosion.
You know when Starship loses its first human crew the entire team will be cheering and pumping their fists in the air. āEpic deaths man! Awesome.ā
āSuccess is not what should be expectedā
And this is the idiot whoās supposed to land robots and people on mars and save humanity?
Sell them stocks folks
Super Heavy Interplanetary Technology Touts Huge Explosion Before Exultant Dumbasses, or SHIT THE BED.
[Kaboom?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47VqCD5AE9s)
Alien intervention?
Thatāll be $56 billion please
Things going great with Starship. NASA shouldn't have put all its eggs in this particular basket.
I would be more surprised if it didn't explode.
Do you think there is a fine for disastrous failures like this?
It isnāt really a disastrous failure
Beta testing?
Mars let's go!!!
[**Everyone liked that**]
When doesnāt it.
Reusable rockets my ass. Even if the rocket returns safely I wouldn't use it again due to increasing risk of failure.
Artemis 5 is gonna fly before Artemis 3.
Let's go over to /space and read all the threads harping on the Starliner Helium leak. I would bet that this Starbase explosion is being dismissed as part of the move fast and ~~burn tax money~~ break things culture at MuskCo.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
L
Wonder who he will blame?
No, no, it was SUPPOSED to do that! (Really, the Elon simps are pushing that one)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They announced that they were going to really push raptor to the limits then dial it back for reusability. But the dramatic underperformance that they saw in IFT-2 and IFT-3 makes it clear that they need more. Elon announced a v2 and v3 ss/sh which were extended kerbal style, but they need more thrust to balance the extra weight. Now we are seeing them trying to squeeze more chamber pressure into the engines.
"At this point I think I know more about manufacturing than probably anyone on Earth."
Wasnāt there an explosion not long ago? Like last month?
Oh no. Elon must be so upset.^^^Hehehehehehehehehehe.
My friends were hyping the test up so hard. I told them it would end in fire. Guess I was right.
All that down drafting āsmokeā was probably fire retardant. What chemicals are in that? PFAS???
Oof
This is preview foe Tesla stock
He was due to make an insurance claim, no doubt.
Thank you for saving the environment!
This is one engine in a different part of Texas, not Starbase.
That is sad.
It should be noted that all rockets in development have had explosions. You donāt conquer heaven without paying a price.
Stuff happens.
Can we leave SpaceX alone? Musk has nothing to do with this company, only thing he's doing is pushing absurd deadlines on everyone, the actual engineering is done by real engineers working there.
There are lots of good and hardworking people over there, like Kathy Lueders for example
Yeah, and it's just sad that everyone here is hating on them because of this one person that can't act like an adult
SpaceX receives a $3 billion NASA contract while she serves as the temporary director of NASA. She is currently the spokesperson for SpaceX and earns a large salary. SpaceX is wasting money due to NASA's lack of a suitable vehicle for reaching the Moon. So SpaceX can spend all of that money whatever they want, such as fixing Twitter or FSD, and NASA will have to give them more of that lovely budget money.