Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[AFTS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9ubmtv "Last usage")|Autonomous Flight Termination System, see FTS|
|[BFR](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rj0im "Last usage")|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)|
| |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you're not the first to notice|
|[EA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9unxxp "Last usage")|Environmental Assessment|
|[F1](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/kaf3xl3 "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V|
| |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)|
|[FAA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9xqrpp "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FTS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9v7qnm "Last usage")|Flight Termination System|
|[GEO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9ru72y "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)|
|GSE|Ground Support Equipment|
|[GTO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9ru72y "Last usage")|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)|
|[HLS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9v9t9l "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)|
|[LEM](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/ka2ucux "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)|
|[LEO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/kuiurrk "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)|
| |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)|
|[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9u30ej "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate|
|[NSF](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rxvdh "Last usage")|[NasaSpaceFlight forum](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com)|
| |National Science Foundation|
|[RUD](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9v6z0a "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unintended Disassembly|
|[SECO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rw25a "Last usage")|Second-stage Engine Cut-Off|
|[SLS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9sd8lc "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift|
|[ULA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rkz7p "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9vdyd2 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9vdgg0 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[ablative](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9s0s9y "Last usage")|Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat)|
|[engine-rich](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9vefrx "Last usage")|Fuel mixture that includes engine parts on fire|
|[iron waffle](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9z0vms "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"|
|[methalox](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9s6ii0 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer|
|[perigee](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rj7jj "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
|[scrub](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rxj47 "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)|
|[turbopump](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9usto2 "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust|
|[ullage motor](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rrqpf "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g|
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Oh so close! FTS fired pretty much at 2^(nd) stage shutdown.
Wins:
* Launch pad survived
* All Booster Raptors operated thru to staging
* Hot staging
* FTS effective (more so than the first flight)
Losses:
* Booster descent FTS terminated
* As mentioned, Starship FTS terminated around SECO
Certainly a major advance over the 1^(st) flight.
You're underplaying it. Keeping all 33 engines lit on the booster essentially proves that Starship is a viable proposition. Yes they need to sort out a few issues, but the main one was always engine viability and they have now demonstrated that Raptor is a capable engine design. Awesome.
Have they confirmed it's undamaged yet? I know it's definitely not as bad as last time, but I'd be curious on how it is afterwards, given how much thrust
No official confirmation, but compared to last time *most* of the cameras placed in the "remote cameras" area are undamaged and people have recovered the footage from those cameras. There are some shots of the water towers with some damage, but that looks like it is unrepaired damage from first time. We'll probably get some aerial shots soon from the team that often does aerial shots, and we'll have confirmation when they re-open traffic on the street.
The people from NFS said on stream that it *appears* there's no major damage, and they are the people who notice every puff and every movement during different stages of ship prep, so it looks good so far.
https://fxtwitter.com/elonmusk/status/1725999525221777561
> Launch pad is in great shape.
Pad after IFT-1 vs IFT-2: https://x.com/RGVaerialphotos/status/1725949574567600283?s=20
/u/Necessary_Context780
I'd say January or February at the soonest. It'll take time to analyze the data, make the necessary modifications, and gives some headroom for some bureaucracy from the government.
I think they said they could theoretically turn around in 2 weeks, but the big limiting factor is going to be the subsequent investigation and getting a new launch license. It'll be faster than last time but I'll be shocked if they launch again this year.
Agreed. someone gave February as a median time frame, probably with a small amount of variance. So January to March is probably what we are looking for here.
A tidy pad this time will probably mean a quicker turnaround time for the approvals.
Hopefully they can move to something where the FAA just gives them the ok to launch for tests without needing to go back each time unless something really weird happens (like the concrete tornado, ship blowing up on launch, danger to people on the ground, or a drastic departure from plan). Blowing up a rocket high in the air the moment it departs from the flight plan should be considered practically nominal for test flights.
The investigation will take more time than that, if only because it looks like the gov will want a checklist and depedning on how much flight data they got at the end will determine if it's a quick fix.
Fast cadence is a bit overblown. The payload capacity is enough to satiate all pending projects in a year. Cadence isn't going to be a concern.
I know the pad looks great, but I think the engines surviving the full flight is the biggest accomplishment.
> Fast cadence is a bit overblown.
Not for Artemis tho. They need fast cadence to fill up an orbital prop depo, with all the boil-off issues, and so on. So for this line of missions fast cadence is paramount.
It's not expected to happen overnight tho, they'll use a bunch of the first orbital flights just flying starlink satellites. But they do want to get to where they can launch 6-9 starships inside a week or so for the Artemis Moon missions.
> But they do want to get to where they can launch 6-9 starships inside a week or so for the Artemis Moon missions.
Source? The actual plan is to get boil-off low enough and payload high enough to not to have to launch 6-9 starships in a week.
NASA's recent panel said anywhere from high single digit to low teens or the pessimistic high teens launches needed for Artemis.
https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/
They're 95% of the way to having a massive, fully expendable launch vehicle which is a huge achievement in and of itself. Biggest hurdles left are ensuring a full SS burn and figuring out payload deployment. After that, it's just about making the whole thing more efficient and fully reusable.
I'd argue that they're 95% of the way to a massive partially reusable vehicle at this point. First stage landing is nothing new to SpaceX and the flip maneuver looked good to me. It'll be interesting to see if it was nominal and they activated the fts on purpose or if fts activated for some other reason.
If you watch the SpaceX stream and view the engine telemetry you can see that a few engines failed to ignite and one of the center engines went out right after boostback started. For a few seconds it looks like the booster tried to symmetrical shut down 2 other engines but it was off course at that point so the FTS engaged. At least that’s what I’m guessing.
I'd imagine that's something that isn't so bad when you have that much redundancy in engines.
Do we know the minimum number of engines needed to land when the booster is empty?
Most likely it will start all 3 center engines and drop to a single engine as it hovers while the tower arms align correctly. Nice thing is that the booster can actually hover unlike falcon 9.
First stage landing at this scale is nothing like previous ones though. No comparison can be made there.
This is still in proof of concept stage not 95% there.
They won't be 95% there until they land a booster once. I'd consider success the first relaunch.
I still contend that SpaceX should (and will) add landing legs to Starship, because in the event that the landing of the booster results in damage (or destruction) of the tower, the Starship will have no where to land. Also, unlike the Shuttle which had like 20+ alternate landing sites throughout the globe, SpaceX will only have 1 or 2 places to land Starship in the event that the mission has to end prior to the scheduled deorbit. If they have landing legs, it could theoretically land anywhere that has an improved (concrete or maybe even asphalt) surface anywhere on the globe.
Did the space shuttle really have all those alternate places to land? Because my memory is they had *exactly* three routes to land (the last one being above America, so the last resort), and the Cape Canaveral landing strip is like 3km long because despite the three routes and the parachutes, the shuttle still comes at such a fast speed that a regular airport can't handle it.
I'm not challenging what you said, but I'd be interested in some sources as I find interesting to have so many choices given how narrow their reentry windows were. Especially given the SS orbiter just glided down like a brick, it had no fuel to reignite the engines at that point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Emergency_landing_sites
There were A LOT of emergency landing locations. Not all of them were great, but they were available in the event of an emergency occurred.
Sorry to be pedantic about this, but what was the situation like back when the Shuttle started to fly? I assume with a strong sense of confidence that there were a lot fewer 3km runways back in the early 80s. But I do not know, thus the question.
You forget that this was just one flight. There might be a lot more issues that could happen, which just have not occured this time. Not every launch is exactly identical.
I mean, as much of a damper as it is, they have not demonstrated that Raptors can reliably restart during flight, which is critical to the whole point of this system. Did you see the distribution of lit engines on the booster after sep?
Failing to relight can have a lot of causes that aren’t related to the engines themselves. They showed that the engines could relight on starship after all the hop tests and it took them a while to get that right. I’m sure they will look closely at all the data and make changes to the next booster to fix it. Could be as simple as slowing the flip down if it caused too much propellant sloshing or waiting a bit longer to ignite the outer 10 engines if the propellant wasn’t properly settled first.
> but the main one was always engine viability
What? Why? The main – and still open – critical question is if they can get the overall reusability up and cost down. Which mainly comes down to reliability and how much maintenance they need.
If I'd been a betting man, I'd have guessed that Booster was going to be damaged by the new procedure. It was a retrofit on a very old vehicle.
All in all, much more progress than I was personally expecting.
The footage shows stage 0 getting absolutely hammered. I wouldn't be surprised if they discover that the ground pad survived better than the rest of it. Crossing fingers that Cape Canaveral's progress will recommence because the new design has been proven.
> Launch pad survived
To me this should be a given. I think many were too dismissive of the obliteration of pad, and the fact there wasn't even a water deluge system at all for the April launch.
They were ready to build those systems, parts already on site. It was a learning experience anyway. Rebuilding the pad and installing the water system happened faster than getting the FAA license, therefore it didn't hold anything back. People doubted this, but in the end SpaceX was right: not a big deal.
Which is sad, the quality isn't the same as on Youtube. The 4k videos I watched on Everday Astronauts stream were awesome. We should have the same from SpaceX.
My guess is hot staging was way more destructive than they thought it would be.
It kind of looked like the second stage engines turned green towards the end and a trail was forming.
All but 1 engine came online after stage sep, then they slowly dropped off afterwards according to the infographic. So yeah, something definitely went wrong with hot staging or the flip or just relighting...
They likely did account for it, They had the center 3 engines running the entire time which should have helped as well. Will be interesting to see what actually caused the issue
They did account for it, it just turned out to be complicated to solve. It isn't just sloshing, it's that when the whole thing flips the centrifugal force pulls the fuel to the ends of the tanks.
I believe the second stage has a secondary small fuel tank in the nose to deal with this. The idea being it can restart the engines during the landing flip on a full tank.
They did account for it, but they try their hardest to not over-engineer. They always wait for flight data to know how much they need to add to have it working, since this means more weight. Simulations are nice and all, but they aren't nearly good enough.
It's always easier to see the problems clearly when it's not quite enough. Just bump it up and go again.
Trying to figure out if you have overengineered things is more difficult. To ultimately find out, you would need to keep dropping things down until failure. In which case, why not just start with the failure points and work up?
Sounds plausible. Even if there was throttle on the inner three engines towards the maneuver, there would still be substantial acceleration “jerks” which could cause sloshing, I guess.
The engines have a tendency of eating themselves if they don't get enough fuel. As I understand it this is inherent to the type (not design) of engine, being both extremely efficient, but also pretty temperamental. This is most likely I think the reason for the boost back burn failure.
Yes. FTS worked perfectly so FAA and SpaceX will not have to spend months investigating why it didn't work. Launch pad also seemed to work so they don't need any modifications to the enviromental assesment.
The fact that the FTS worked, and stage 0 appears to be in perfect shape, FAA approval for the next launch should be much faster.
The bottleneck to launch rate will be as fast as space x can build rockets.
Indeed. Boca Chica is currently only cleared for 5 orbital launches a year.
> SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Super Heavy program, under which SpaceX would conduct up to 5 orbital Starship/Super Heavy launches per year and up to 5 suborbital Starship launches per year from the Boca Chica launch site
[Source](https://www.faa.gov/media/72816)
the 2nd stage presumably went boom very close to the orbit speed/height they were aiming for. i havent heard of concerns about a debris cloud... is this a thing we should expect to hear more about or a nonissue?
likely a non-issue. it was missing 30 seconds of second engine firing, and even then it wouldn't have gone orbital, just short of orbital.
I don't believe a regular explosion can accelerate anything by as much as firing engines for 30 seconds can, but i am not a rocket scientist.
Maybe it is a stupid question, but how does starship start? I mean is there some engineer that click some “start” button on a pc? Even if it is automated, i think that there has to be some start point.
Pretty much, but they have a timed program for all the events so an engineer will click start and then the rocket/launchpad waits for the appropriate time to begin doing everything on schedule. They have hold buttons too, so at 40seconds they paused to check something and then they restarted the countdown.
Fairly sure no one presses a button when it goes 3 2 1 0 because many things have to happen in the lead up to that exact moment.
Rocket engine start sequences are incredibly detailed, and in this case also proprietary. However the Space Shuttle main engine start sequences are well documented and here's a really good video going over the startup process. Many of the things that happen will be analogous for Starship.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgT9-oMXgCU
One small step for man and before you know it SpaceX will be launching these monthly. Love to see progress like this, speaks to the old school American spirit.
Doesn't surprise me. How many early falcons were lost in testing? The bugs will be worked out in due time. Sucks they are there, but this is literally Rocket Science so thems the breaks.
Guess I'm just spoiled by the old Youtube channel where we'd have live 1080p video. Ultra annoying I have to wait to watch.
Tried to go to Youtube to search around and was presented with 2-3 minute commercials before I could even see if what I was watching was worth it. Gave up.
So annoyed right now haha
This is definitely a step in the wrong direction
Feeling the same in some ways. The loss of the SpaceX stream sucks. Although waiting a few days does allow some of the hype to pass and allow the trash that goes up in the race to be "first" to get washed away.
Also, Musk still owns about 50% of SpaceX while Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon. I guess a success/failure feels more personal when he owns half of it
>while Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon.
But Amazon ≠ Blue Origin. Bezos has full ownership of Blue Origin. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-blue-origin/
When you mention his name it increases clicks. At this point any news report about any of his companies gets his name attached. Yes it's annoying, for both people who are fans of his companies and for people who hate Musk and his companies, but that's just how the media works.
... Yes it is? You know it is! Jeff Bezos comes up every time someone talks about either Blue Origin or Amazon.
You hate that Musk is important to this, and you don't hate that Jeff Bezos is important to Amazon or Blue Origin for some reason. That's it.
You know when it explodes they say “Musks rocket exploded”, but when they need to praise SpaceX, it is always “SpaceX and their team successfuly launched a rocket”.
I watched the live stream this morning with my toddler who thought it was awesome. And I was hyping it up to him the whole time. My wife’s aunt who was over at our house was being kind of pessimistic about it (and space flight in general) and was saying she didn’t get what the “big deal” was and didn’t understand why anyone would want to go to mars.
The best way I could explain it was we just got to watch the sails on the Mayflower unfurled for the first time. We probably won’t see major space colonization in our lifetime, but we know the knew world is out there.
> We probably won’t see major space colonization in our lifetime, but we know the knew world is out there.
I guess it depends on your definition. I've been around since the late 80s "we're 10 years from Mars", but I finally believe it. It'll take time, people will almost certainly die, but at this point I think a "colony of hundreds of people on Mars by 2040" is more likely than not.
Yea I agree there will be something, I think we will have some kind of sustained presence in space (moon/mars) in that time. That’s kind of why I put the *major* qualifier on there. I think they will be small remote outposts, vs what I think of as a true “space colony” which would be in my mind conjures and image of a far more self sufficient and permanent presence.
Completely self-sufficient colonies is a long way off; most countries on Earth are not self sufficient in terms of being able to internally produce everything necessary to maintain its current standard of living. It was common for colonies in the Americas to fail if they couldn't get shipments from Europe, and they didn't need to pack their own breathing air. So I don't think it's fair to judge a space colony as "true" or not based off that.
I don’t consider mcmurdo station a colony, and I think that’s what any “space colony” is going to look like for quite some time. It will be primarily for scientific research purposes, not necessarily to establish a “new world”. I’m not saying it as a bad thing, it’s an important step towards being an interplanetary species, that will just take time. Eventually we will have true colonization, just not in our time. But we will be able to see scientific outposts on other planets and that’s still dope.
lol, we won't even have humans set foot on Mars by the 2040s. Even once Starship is solved (still lots of risks, and a non-0 possibility of failure of the entire program), they maybe reached 1% of the complexity of what it would take to get people to Mars, let alone any colony.
Things to solve of the top of my head, but many more:
1. Actual re-entry of starship (tiles keep falling off)
2. Proper re-use of Starship
3. Increased cadence of flights, since, even flights to the moon will require 10-20 starships.
4. Developing refueling technology in space. (never proven)
5. Designing long duration life-support systems.
6. Designing redundancies on top of redundancies for those life support systems.
7. Developing and proving radiation shielding.
8. Fuel depots and infrastructure in Mars orbit.
9. Infrastructure on Mars, including in-situ
10. Configuration of starship for interplanetary travel. For example, should multiple starships be mated together. One starship for 2 astronauts and 3 years has the same volume adjusted for time as the LEM for a 1 week mission with 2 astronauts, so, we'll likely need to send lots of starships, including refueling ships to Mars for any one specific journey. Say, sending 6 astronauts to Mars probably means at least 10 starships travelling to Mars together, and that's only if we solve in-situ fuel production. More likely 100 starships without.
I'm a big fan of spaceflight, but, believing humans will be on Mars that early is pure fantasy. Will bet you $1.
I think they were **extremely** trigger-happy with the self-destruct this flight, even just a slight problem got kaboomed. Maybe demonstrating FTS effectiveness to the regulators after the colossal screw-up with IFT-1’s FTS.
Can't say for certain with what we know, but if you watch the feed from SpX themselves there were definite problems with the booster after sep.
Main engines stayed lit, but on relight a couple didn't then more and more cut out. So if I had to make a guess.
Stage Sep went well, but maybe something like sloshing caused booster engine failures which drove it off course too much and itch AFTS blew it.
If they weren't rate limited to 5 per year I'd be curious if they'd launch a few boosters and test the flip with it. As there seems to be some similar issues as we saw with the flip for SS. They won't ever do that from Boca because they have the 5 per year cap. But I'd be curious if IRL testing would warrant it if it weren't capped for other reasons.
Yeah, there were definitely visible problems with both stages in the seconds before their respective destruction. Still a big win for Starship. But FTS or not, destruction was probably warranted in both cases.
Scott Manley's video does a great job at analyzing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF2C7xE9Mj4
To be fair, the first flight in April should have triggered the FTS way earlier based on how the booster was off-trajectory. Maybe the first mission had too loose of parameters, and this mission was too tight.
Actually the FTS activate it when it needed to. The problem was that it didn't destroy the vehicle like it was supposed to. Basically everyone underestimated how robust Starship is.
The boostback burn wasn't proceeding normally. This likely put the booster outside the nominal flight corridor with low probability of recovery. That in turn triggered the flight termination system, as it should.
So, a successful test of the automated FTS.
The tank relies to some degree on g-force to feed the turbopumps which feed the engine. Turning it around means fuel instead sloshing away from the pumps, or so I hear.
*4. Liability Insurance: Space Exploration Technologies, Corp. shall maintain a policy or policies of liability insurance in accordance with 14 CFR § 440.9(b) in the amount of:
...
b. Five Hundred Million Dollars ($500,000,000) for covered claims resulting from the flight of the Starship Super Heavy launch vehicle from SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Complex, Boca Chica, Texas.*
[launch license PDF via faa.gov](https://www.faa.gov/media/69476)
I'd frame that to show your grandkids and tell them it was the second test flight. Back then they only had one starship launch pad and launches were months apart. Well seem so primitive.
All the outlets are publishing articles about this unfortunate failure of a launch. Despite it being a second attempt already.
And I'm just sitting here like, damn.... I dont think there are many rockets that got this far in their second launch in all of rocket history. What sort of miracle are these "experts" expecting?!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread: |Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |[AFTS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9ubmtv "Last usage")|Autonomous Flight Termination System, see FTS| |[BFR](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rj0im "Last usage")|Big Falcon Rocket (2018 rebiggened edition)| | |Yes, the F stands for something else; no, you're not the first to notice| |[EA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9unxxp "Last usage")|Environmental Assessment| |[F1](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/kaf3xl3 "Last usage")|Rocketdyne-developed rocket engine used for Saturn V| | |SpaceX Falcon 1 (obsolete small-lift vehicle)| |[FAA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9xqrpp "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration| |[FTS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9v7qnm "Last usage")|Flight Termination System| |[GEO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9ru72y "Last usage")|Geostationary Earth Orbit (35786km)| |GSE|Ground Support Equipment| |[GTO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9ru72y "Last usage")|[Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit](http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/20140116-how-to-get-a-satellite-to-gto.html)| |[HLS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9v9t9l "Last usage")|[Human Landing System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis_program#Human_Landing_System) (Artemis)| |[LEM](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/ka2ucux "Last usage")|(Apollo) [Lunar Excursion Module](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module) (also Lunar Module)| |[LEO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/kuiurrk "Last usage")|Low Earth Orbit (180-2000km)| | |Law Enforcement Officer (most often mentioned during transport operations)| |[NOAA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9u30ej "Last usage")|National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, responsible for US ~~generation~~ monitoring of the climate| |[NSF](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rxvdh "Last usage")|[NasaSpaceFlight forum](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com)| | |National Science Foundation| |[RUD](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9v6z0a "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly| | |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly| | |Rapid Unintended Disassembly| |[SECO](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rw25a "Last usage")|Second-stage Engine Cut-Off| |[SLS](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9sd8lc "Last usage")|Space Launch System heavy-lift| |[ULA](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rkz7p "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)| |Jargon|Definition| |-------|---------|---| |[Raptor](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9vdyd2 "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX| |[Starlink](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9vdgg0 "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation| |[ablative](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9s0s9y "Last usage")|Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat)| |[engine-rich](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9vefrx "Last usage")|Fuel mixture that includes engine parts on fire| |[iron waffle](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9z0vms "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"| |[methalox](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9s6ii0 "Last usage")|Portmanteau: methane fuel, liquid oxygen oxidizer| |[perigee](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rj7jj "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)| |[scrub](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rxj47 "Last usage")|Launch postponement for any reason (commonly GSE issues)| |[turbopump](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9usto2 "Last usage")|High-pressure turbine-driven propellant pump connected to a rocket combustion chamber; raises chamber pressure, and thrust| |[ullage motor](/r/Space/comments/17y6c24/stub/k9rrqpf "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g| **NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below. ---------------- ^(27 acronyms in this thread; )[^(the most compressed thread commented on today)](/r/Space/comments/1b9n7gv)^( has 8 acronyms.) ^([Thread #9450 for this sub, first seen 18th Nov 2023, 14:27]) ^[[FAQ]](http://decronym.xyz/) [^([Full list])](http://decronym.xyz/acronyms/Space) [^[Contact]](https://hachyderm.io/@Two9A) [^([Source code])](https://gistdotgithubdotcom/Two9A/1d976f9b7441694162c8)
Oh so close! FTS fired pretty much at 2^(nd) stage shutdown. Wins: * Launch pad survived * All Booster Raptors operated thru to staging * Hot staging * FTS effective (more so than the first flight) Losses: * Booster descent FTS terminated * As mentioned, Starship FTS terminated around SECO Certainly a major advance over the 1^(st) flight.
You're underplaying it. Keeping all 33 engines lit on the booster essentially proves that Starship is a viable proposition. Yes they need to sort out a few issues, but the main one was always engine viability and they have now demonstrated that Raptor is a capable engine design. Awesome.
The launch tower also looks undamaged, and that's crucial for "fast cadence". The showerhead / bidet thing worked!
Have they confirmed it's undamaged yet? I know it's definitely not as bad as last time, but I'd be curious on how it is afterwards, given how much thrust
No official confirmation, but compared to last time *most* of the cameras placed in the "remote cameras" area are undamaged and people have recovered the footage from those cameras. There are some shots of the water towers with some damage, but that looks like it is unrepaired damage from first time. We'll probably get some aerial shots soon from the team that often does aerial shots, and we'll have confirmation when they re-open traffic on the street. The people from NFS said on stream that it *appears* there's no major damage, and they are the people who notice every puff and every movement during different stages of ship prep, so it looks good so far.
https://fxtwitter.com/elonmusk/status/1725999525221777561 > Launch pad is in great shape. Pad after IFT-1 vs IFT-2: https://x.com/RGVaerialphotos/status/1725949574567600283?s=20 /u/Necessary_Context780
And they already have a few boosters+ ships in pipeline for another launch in maybe a few weeks
I'd say January or February at the soonest. It'll take time to analyze the data, make the necessary modifications, and gives some headroom for some bureaucracy from the government.
I think they said they could theoretically turn around in 2 weeks, but the big limiting factor is going to be the subsequent investigation and getting a new launch license. It'll be faster than last time but I'll be shocked if they launch again this year.
Agreed. someone gave February as a median time frame, probably with a small amount of variance. So January to March is probably what we are looking for here. A tidy pad this time will probably mean a quicker turnaround time for the approvals. Hopefully they can move to something where the FAA just gives them the ok to launch for tests without needing to go back each time unless something really weird happens (like the concrete tornado, ship blowing up on launch, danger to people on the ground, or a drastic departure from plan). Blowing up a rocket high in the air the moment it departs from the flight plan should be considered practically nominal for test flights.
The investigation will take more time than that, if only because it looks like the gov will want a checklist and depedning on how much flight data they got at the end will determine if it's a quick fix.
Fast cadence is a bit overblown. The payload capacity is enough to satiate all pending projects in a year. Cadence isn't going to be a concern. I know the pad looks great, but I think the engines surviving the full flight is the biggest accomplishment.
> Fast cadence is a bit overblown. Not for Artemis tho. They need fast cadence to fill up an orbital prop depo, with all the boil-off issues, and so on. So for this line of missions fast cadence is paramount. It's not expected to happen overnight tho, they'll use a bunch of the first orbital flights just flying starlink satellites. But they do want to get to where they can launch 6-9 starships inside a week or so for the Artemis Moon missions.
Not for Starlink either. SpaceX wants to get the full sized Starlink V2 Sats up ASAP, and that is going to mean nearly daily flights.
> But they do want to get to where they can launch 6-9 starships inside a week or so for the Artemis Moon missions. Source? The actual plan is to get boil-off low enough and payload high enough to not to have to launch 6-9 starships in a week.
NASA's recent panel said anywhere from high single digit to low teens or the pessimistic high teens launches needed for Artemis. https://spacenews.com/starship-lunar-lander-missions-to-require-nearly-20-launches-nasa-says/
I read the article when it came out. It doesn't say 6-9 starship launches in a week.
They're 95% of the way to having a massive, fully expendable launch vehicle which is a huge achievement in and of itself. Biggest hurdles left are ensuring a full SS burn and figuring out payload deployment. After that, it's just about making the whole thing more efficient and fully reusable.
I'd argue that they're 95% of the way to a massive partially reusable vehicle at this point. First stage landing is nothing new to SpaceX and the flip maneuver looked good to me. It'll be interesting to see if it was nominal and they activated the fts on purpose or if fts activated for some other reason.
If you watch the SpaceX stream and view the engine telemetry you can see that a few engines failed to ignite and one of the center engines went out right after boostback started. For a few seconds it looks like the booster tried to symmetrical shut down 2 other engines but it was off course at that point so the FTS engaged. At least that’s what I’m guessing.
I think you're right. The interesting thing will be determining why they didn't relight.
I'd imagine that's something that isn't so bad when you have that much redundancy in engines. Do we know the minimum number of engines needed to land when the booster is empty?
Most likely it will start all 3 center engines and drop to a single engine as it hovers while the tower arms align correctly. Nice thing is that the booster can actually hover unlike falcon 9.
First stage landing at this scale is nothing like previous ones though. No comparison can be made there. This is still in proof of concept stage not 95% there. They won't be 95% there until they land a booster once. I'd consider success the first relaunch.
I still contend that SpaceX should (and will) add landing legs to Starship, because in the event that the landing of the booster results in damage (or destruction) of the tower, the Starship will have no where to land. Also, unlike the Shuttle which had like 20+ alternate landing sites throughout the globe, SpaceX will only have 1 or 2 places to land Starship in the event that the mission has to end prior to the scheduled deorbit. If they have landing legs, it could theoretically land anywhere that has an improved (concrete or maybe even asphalt) surface anywhere on the globe.
Did the space shuttle really have all those alternate places to land? Because my memory is they had *exactly* three routes to land (the last one being above America, so the last resort), and the Cape Canaveral landing strip is like 3km long because despite the three routes and the parachutes, the shuttle still comes at such a fast speed that a regular airport can't handle it. I'm not challenging what you said, but I'd be interested in some sources as I find interesting to have so many choices given how narrow their reentry windows were. Especially given the SS orbiter just glided down like a brick, it had no fuel to reignite the engines at that point
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes#Emergency_landing_sites There were A LOT of emergency landing locations. Not all of them were great, but they were available in the event of an emergency occurred.
JFK is on the emergency list. That landing would have been crazy.
Just gonna mention that a 3km long runway isn't actually that special. Most major international airports are pushing 3.5km.
Sorry to be pedantic about this, but what was the situation like back when the Shuttle started to fly? I assume with a strong sense of confidence that there were a lot fewer 3km runways back in the early 80s. But I do not know, thus the question.
T[he Space Shuttle minimum appears to be more like 3.6km.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Space_Shuttle_landing_sites)
The entire booster is relatively inexpensive to rebuild. If there is no landing site, completely viable to just not let it.
You forget that this was just one flight. There might be a lot more issues that could happen, which just have not occured this time. Not every launch is exactly identical.
Rockets have a strong trend of becoming more reliable over time. I doubt they just got extremely lucky and this is just an outlier.
Now the re-entry at orbial or lunar velocity is the biggest milestone they need to demonstrate. Heat tiles are a can of worms. 95% is very optimistic.
95% is just some random bullshit number at this point…
I mean, as much of a damper as it is, they have not demonstrated that Raptors can reliably restart during flight, which is critical to the whole point of this system. Did you see the distribution of lit engines on the booster after sep?
Failing to relight can have a lot of causes that aren’t related to the engines themselves. They showed that the engines could relight on starship after all the hop tests and it took them a while to get that right. I’m sure they will look closely at all the data and make changes to the next booster to fix it. Could be as simple as slowing the flip down if it caused too much propellant sloshing or waiting a bit longer to ignite the outer 10 engines if the propellant wasn’t properly settled first.
This. I'd suspect is was a propellant feed problem.
Do we know many were supposed to relight? I saw the unlit engines and wondered if lighting only some of them was used for the flip maneuver.
> but the main one was always engine viability What? Why? The main – and still open – critical question is if they can get the overall reusability up and cost down. Which mainly comes down to reliability and how much maintenance they need.
That engine plume that was nearly twice as long as the rocket itself was gorgeous!
Yeah, to not have a single engine failure on either vehicle is unexpected and awesome.
> Booster descent FTS terminated Is that confirmed? During the stream, they said it was a RUD.
Maybe they still count it as a RUD if the FTS activates automatically.
We could coin a new acronym for Rapid Intentional Disassembly.
I thought the U stood for Unscheduled, but I guess Unintentional works too
The fts event was not scheduled. And happened rapidly.
Good news. Would've been great to test booster re-entry and starship re-entry, but this is still very good.
Regular people: LOL it blew up, haw haw, fail! r/space people: Significant step forward in development of advanced technology! I love this sub ❤️
If I'd been a betting man, I'd have guessed that Booster was going to be damaged by the new procedure. It was a retrofit on a very old vehicle. All in all, much more progress than I was personally expecting. The footage shows stage 0 getting absolutely hammered. I wouldn't be surprised if they discover that the ground pad survived better than the rest of it. Crossing fingers that Cape Canaveral's progress will recommence because the new design has been proven.
> Launch pad survived To me this should be a given. I think many were too dismissive of the obliteration of pad, and the fact there wasn't even a water deluge system at all for the April launch.
They were ready to build those systems, parts already on site. It was a learning experience anyway. Rebuilding the pad and installing the water system happened faster than getting the FAA license, therefore it didn't hold anything back. People doubted this, but in the end SpaceX was right: not a big deal.
Scott Manley breaks it down, as per: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF2C7xE9Mj4
Link to the video of the moment of lift-off, was absolutely amazing to watch https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1725862657780281349
Watching those shockwaves dance in the clouds of gas and dust on the launchpad is so cool. That is an absurd amount of energy.
You see the tank being dented by the all the stuff made by starship on nsf stream? that was crazy
Are you thinking of videos from IFT-1? This launch didn't kick up much
This video of the launch is much better: https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1725879726479450297
Watching that first shockwave ripple through everything...
That had to have shook the ground for miles away. Absolutely massive.
This is INCREDIBLE. What a feat. I have to see one of these launch in person.
Do you know why the launch wasn't livestreamed like the rest of SpaceX's launches?
It was, but unfortunately only on X/Twitter
Which is sad, the quality isn't the same as on Youtube. The 4k videos I watched on Everday Astronauts stream were awesome. We should have the same from SpaceX.
Patiently waiting for the youtube mirrors.
Why go for a recompressed file? You don't need an account to view it even.
Probably because he hates X and Elon musk.
Envisioning the day when Mechazilla’s chopsticks can catch the hovering booster/Starship will be truly mind blowing
My guess is hot staging was way more destructive than they thought it would be. It kind of looked like the second stage engines turned green towards the end and a trail was forming.
That's going to be hard to tell as it was heading into the sunrise.
I'm sure that upper heat shield for the booster was packed with all kinds of sensors that will help SpaceX determine exactly how it failed.
All but 1 engine came online after stage sep, then they slowly dropped off afterwards according to the infographic. So yeah, something definitely went wrong with hot staging or the flip or just relighting...
Could be propellant feed issues like back during the belly flop tests.
For the uninformed, the flip tests sloshed the propellant around the tanks, so it couldn't get to the engines.
Surprising that they didn't account for that, hasn't propellant sloshing been an issue on Falcon 1?
They likely did account for it, They had the center 3 engines running the entire time which should have helped as well. Will be interesting to see what actually caused the issue
They did account for it, it just turned out to be complicated to solve. It isn't just sloshing, it's that when the whole thing flips the centrifugal force pulls the fuel to the ends of the tanks. I believe the second stage has a secondary small fuel tank in the nose to deal with this. The idea being it can restart the engines during the landing flip on a full tank.
They did account for it, but they try their hardest to not over-engineer. They always wait for flight data to know how much they need to add to have it working, since this means more weight. Simulations are nice and all, but they aren't nearly good enough.
It's always easier to see the problems clearly when it's not quite enough. Just bump it up and go again. Trying to figure out if you have overengineered things is more difficult. To ultimately find out, you would need to keep dropping things down until failure. In which case, why not just start with the failure points and work up?
Sounds plausible. Even if there was throttle on the inner three engines towards the maneuver, there would still be substantial acceleration “jerks” which could cause sloshing, I guess.
Green flames probably mean the copper combustion chambers were burning up in the engines.
I thought they were some super alloy that was capable of handling the 300 bar and we're of white metal origins.....
The engines have a tendency of eating themselves if they don't get enough fuel. As I understand it this is inherent to the type (not design) of engine, being both extremely efficient, but also pretty temperamental. This is most likely I think the reason for the boost back burn failure.
So should we expect a third test flight sooner as this one went quite well?
Yes. FTS worked perfectly so FAA and SpaceX will not have to spend months investigating why it didn't work. Launch pad also seemed to work so they don't need any modifications to the enviromental assesment.
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Good job SpaceX designers, engineers and laborers!!
Yes, they made it happen. Without them none of this would be possible.
Wow, that looked to me to be a near textbook liftoff. Was great seeing every Raptor burning.
This was what I most took note of. All Raptors burning. Good stuff.
The fact that the FTS worked, and stage 0 appears to be in perfect shape, FAA approval for the next launch should be much faster. The bottleneck to launch rate will be as fast as space x can build rockets.
The building is not really an issue. They are kinda backed up with prebuit boosters and ships. Testing and regulatory aproval are the blockers here.
Indeed. Boca Chica is currently only cleared for 5 orbital launches a year. > SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Super Heavy program, under which SpaceX would conduct up to 5 orbital Starship/Super Heavy launches per year and up to 5 suborbital Starship launches per year from the Boca Chica launch site [Source](https://www.faa.gov/media/72816)
Got about 1.5 months to do 3 more launches then
It's probably too short for even one launch, but imagine a scrub on the 31th of december...
the 2nd stage presumably went boom very close to the orbit speed/height they were aiming for. i havent heard of concerns about a debris cloud... is this a thing we should expect to hear more about or a nonissue?
likely a non-issue. it was missing 30 seconds of second engine firing, and even then it wouldn't have gone orbital, just short of orbital. I don't believe a regular explosion can accelerate anything by as much as firing engines for 30 seconds can, but i am not a rocket scientist.
No, the trajectory lands in the Atlantic anyway
They specifically planned the trajectory to ensure it wouldn't be a problem.
Maybe it is a stupid question, but how does starship start? I mean is there some engineer that click some “start” button on a pc? Even if it is automated, i think that there has to be some start point.
The startup sequences for these types of rockets are insanely complex, so they are likely mostly automated.
The initial countdown is triggered manually, but at something like 40 seconds, the flight computer takes over.
Pretty much, but they have a timed program for all the events so an engineer will click start and then the rocket/launchpad waits for the appropriate time to begin doing everything on schedule. They have hold buttons too, so at 40seconds they paused to check something and then they restarted the countdown. Fairly sure no one presses a button when it goes 3 2 1 0 because many things have to happen in the lead up to that exact moment.
They have someone walk under it with a BIC lighter, give it a few flicks, good to go.
Rocket engine start sequences are incredibly detailed, and in this case also proprietary. However the Space Shuttle main engine start sequences are well documented and here's a really good video going over the startup process. Many of the things that happen will be analogous for Starship. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgT9-oMXgCU
There's a mesmerizing video of the booster engines shutting off...I can't find it tho
One small step for man and before you know it SpaceX will be launching these monthly. Love to see progress like this, speaks to the old school American spirit.
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Orbit is getting closer and closer. But then there's so much left to do, reentry, reuse and refueling. Space isn't easy.
Doesn't surprise me. How many early falcons were lost in testing? The bugs will be worked out in due time. Sucks they are there, but this is literally Rocket Science so thems the breaks.
I think it was 4 Falcon 1s? But it was a lot of commercial F9 launches before the first successful landing.
It was 3 F1. No. 4 was a success. If it were not, there would not be a SpaceX around.
That was one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.
Is there a **high res** recording / stream of the event anywhere to watch?
I'd say give it a day or so. It takes time for the high res stuff to get uploaded.
Guess I'm just spoiled by the old Youtube channel where we'd have live 1080p video. Ultra annoying I have to wait to watch. Tried to go to Youtube to search around and was presented with 2-3 minute commercials before I could even see if what I was watching was worth it. Gave up. So annoyed right now haha This is definitely a step in the wrong direction
Feeling the same in some ways. The loss of the SpaceX stream sucks. Although waiting a few days does allow some of the hype to pass and allow the trash that goes up in the race to be "first" to get washed away.
Why is it always presented as Elon Musk’s SpaceX? It’s not Jeff Bezo’s Amazon
Because Musk in the title gets more clicks. More people have heard about Musk than Spacex.
Also, Musk still owns about 50% of SpaceX while Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon. I guess a success/failure feels more personal when he owns half of it
>while Bezos owns less than 10% of Amazon. But Amazon ≠ Blue Origin. Bezos has full ownership of Blue Origin. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-blue-origin/
And Bezos stepped down as Amazon's CEO two years ago while Musk remains SpaceX's "Chief Engineer and Technoking"
and in spite of that, SpaceX is doing pretty well.
Actually more of a Google SEO play than anything. Source: Me, used to work in news including at CNN.
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This is an interesting objection, since it is always “Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin”
When you mention his name it increases clicks. At this point any news report about any of his companies gets his name attached. Yes it's annoying, for both people who are fans of his companies and for people who hate Musk and his companies, but that's just how the media works.
Maybe because he owns 42% of it and has 79% of its voting power and he is the CEO and CTO and founded it?
Saying the cringey man's name gets mad clicks.
... Yes it is? You know it is! Jeff Bezos comes up every time someone talks about either Blue Origin or Amazon. You hate that Musk is important to this, and you don't hate that Jeff Bezos is important to Amazon or Blue Origin for some reason. That's it.
You know when it explodes they say “Musks rocket exploded”, but when they need to praise SpaceX, it is always “SpaceX and their team successfuly launched a rocket”.
Got to space even! Amazing success. I was only hoping for it to survive stage separation this test flight and it did!
Aside from the booster’s “Unscheduled Rapid Disassembly”, seems like a success overall.
Starship also terminated before SECO
I watched the live stream this morning with my toddler who thought it was awesome. And I was hyping it up to him the whole time. My wife’s aunt who was over at our house was being kind of pessimistic about it (and space flight in general) and was saying she didn’t get what the “big deal” was and didn’t understand why anyone would want to go to mars. The best way I could explain it was we just got to watch the sails on the Mayflower unfurled for the first time. We probably won’t see major space colonization in our lifetime, but we know the knew world is out there.
> We probably won’t see major space colonization in our lifetime, but we know the knew world is out there. I guess it depends on your definition. I've been around since the late 80s "we're 10 years from Mars", but I finally believe it. It'll take time, people will almost certainly die, but at this point I think a "colony of hundreds of people on Mars by 2040" is more likely than not.
Yea I agree there will be something, I think we will have some kind of sustained presence in space (moon/mars) in that time. That’s kind of why I put the *major* qualifier on there. I think they will be small remote outposts, vs what I think of as a true “space colony” which would be in my mind conjures and image of a far more self sufficient and permanent presence.
Completely self-sufficient colonies is a long way off; most countries on Earth are not self sufficient in terms of being able to internally produce everything necessary to maintain its current standard of living. It was common for colonies in the Americas to fail if they couldn't get shipments from Europe, and they didn't need to pack their own breathing air. So I don't think it's fair to judge a space colony as "true" or not based off that.
I don’t consider mcmurdo station a colony, and I think that’s what any “space colony” is going to look like for quite some time. It will be primarily for scientific research purposes, not necessarily to establish a “new world”. I’m not saying it as a bad thing, it’s an important step towards being an interplanetary species, that will just take time. Eventually we will have true colonization, just not in our time. But we will be able to see scientific outposts on other planets and that’s still dope.
For me, I know Mars is the current long term goal, but I'm more looking for more manned Orbital Stations, and station(s) set up on the moon.
Hundreds of people on Mars by 2040? Press X to doubt.
not hundreds. ~100. (so like 60-300 would be a win) Yeah I'll make that bet at this point.
lol, we won't even have humans set foot on Mars by the 2040s. Even once Starship is solved (still lots of risks, and a non-0 possibility of failure of the entire program), they maybe reached 1% of the complexity of what it would take to get people to Mars, let alone any colony. Things to solve of the top of my head, but many more: 1. Actual re-entry of starship (tiles keep falling off) 2. Proper re-use of Starship 3. Increased cadence of flights, since, even flights to the moon will require 10-20 starships. 4. Developing refueling technology in space. (never proven) 5. Designing long duration life-support systems. 6. Designing redundancies on top of redundancies for those life support systems. 7. Developing and proving radiation shielding. 8. Fuel depots and infrastructure in Mars orbit. 9. Infrastructure on Mars, including in-situ 10. Configuration of starship for interplanetary travel. For example, should multiple starships be mated together. One starship for 2 astronauts and 3 years has the same volume adjusted for time as the LEM for a 1 week mission with 2 astronauts, so, we'll likely need to send lots of starships, including refueling ships to Mars for any one specific journey. Say, sending 6 astronauts to Mars probably means at least 10 starships travelling to Mars together, and that's only if we solve in-situ fuel production. More likely 100 starships without. I'm a big fan of spaceflight, but, believing humans will be on Mars that early is pure fantasy. Will bet you $1.
I think they were **extremely** trigger-happy with the self-destruct this flight, even just a slight problem got kaboomed. Maybe demonstrating FTS effectiveness to the regulators after the colossal screw-up with IFT-1’s FTS.
It's an automated FTS so probably just set overly restrictive ranges, which makes sense.
Can't say for certain with what we know, but if you watch the feed from SpX themselves there were definite problems with the booster after sep. Main engines stayed lit, but on relight a couple didn't then more and more cut out. So if I had to make a guess. Stage Sep went well, but maybe something like sloshing caused booster engine failures which drove it off course too much and itch AFTS blew it. If they weren't rate limited to 5 per year I'd be curious if they'd launch a few boosters and test the flip with it. As there seems to be some similar issues as we saw with the flip for SS. They won't ever do that from Boca because they have the 5 per year cap. But I'd be curious if IRL testing would warrant it if it weren't capped for other reasons.
Yeah, there were definitely visible problems with both stages in the seconds before their respective destruction. Still a big win for Starship. But FTS or not, destruction was probably warranted in both cases. Scott Manley's video does a great job at analyzing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF2C7xE9Mj4
>I think they were extremely trigger-happy with the self-destruct this fligh They automatically trigger outside a set of flight parameters.
Yeah, I was saying with extremely tight parameters.
space flight has extremely tight parameters in general
To be fair, the first flight in April should have triggered the FTS way earlier based on how the booster was off-trajectory. Maybe the first mission had too loose of parameters, and this mission was too tight.
Yeah but given they are flinging a skyscraper at orbital speeds I feel like overly tight is far better than the other option.
Maybe so, but I think it was to demonstrate to the FAA that it can work conservatively on purose.
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Actually the FTS activate it when it needed to. The problem was that it didn't destroy the vehicle like it was supposed to. Basically everyone underestimated how robust Starship is.
I don't think you have enough information to evaluate that.
That would make sense after the first test flew on after FTS activation. That was a wildly successful and entertaining failure.
What was the black smoke on liftoff? Methalox burns clean.
NICE!! Keep going guys. You're damn close! I'm a fan.
God damn what a beautiful explosion though. Do they know what happened? Did flipping make the tanks angry or something?
The boostback burn wasn't proceeding normally. This likely put the booster outside the nominal flight corridor with low probability of recovery. That in turn triggered the flight termination system, as it should. So, a successful test of the automated FTS.
The tank relies to some degree on g-force to feed the turbopumps which feed the engine. Turning it around means fuel instead sloshing away from the pumps, or so I hear.
They're all a bit premature, these news posts.
The ship peaked at an altitude of 149km. That's space any way you slice it
Right, but I read the article. And it talks about how Starship is coasting in space and how it isn't exploded at all.
Bloody hell, you're right, it even mentions stage 1 termination, but the 2nd stage continuing on. Now that's what I call hot off the press
I mean, it did continue on for like a solid 6 minutes before fts, so it was true while posted
Thanks to inflation since the 1960s, space today doesn't start until 300 km.
global warming has expanded the atmosphere
The title is accurate as written. (Though it appears the contents at the moment aren't quite right.)
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A piece of the roof of my house fell apart thanks to the vibrations from the takeoff
We salute your inconvenience.
do you live in boca/brownsville?
SpaceX has insurance against damage so you can probably file a claim with your insurance against SpaceX.
*4. Liability Insurance: Space Exploration Technologies, Corp. shall maintain a policy or policies of liability insurance in accordance with 14 CFR § 440.9(b) in the amount of: ... b. Five Hundred Million Dollars ($500,000,000) for covered claims resulting from the flight of the Starship Super Heavy launch vehicle from SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Complex, Boca Chica, Texas.* [launch license PDF via faa.gov](https://www.faa.gov/media/69476)
Thanks for digging out the quote. I was thinking of doing that but didn't have time to go looking for it.
A piece of my roof fell off due to me cheering at the TV!! Amazing!!
I'd frame that to show your grandkids and tell them it was the second test flight. Back then they only had one starship launch pad and launches were months apart. Well seem so primitive.
Sounds like the kinda thing spacex is liable to fix
All the outlets are publishing articles about this unfortunate failure of a launch. Despite it being a second attempt already. And I'm just sitting here like, damn.... I dont think there are many rockets that got this far in their second launch in all of rocket history. What sort of miracle are these "experts" expecting?!