SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.

        • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          262·
          8 months ago

          Falcon 9 is the most reliable rocket in the world and it used to explode like this too. It’ll be 5-10 years of successful unmanned flights before anyone rides on this rocket.

            • kobra@lemm.ee
              84·
              8 months ago

              You literally said you were concerned for manned flight in your last comment. So originally it was the rocket and engineering you were concerned about.

                • kobra@lemm.ee
                  32·
                  8 months ago

                  That might’ve been what you intended but it is not what you said. You didn’t bring that up until your 2nd comment.

          • Neato@kbin.social
            517·
            8 months ago

            Was NASA exploding rockets this frequently when they pioneered all of this decades ago? It only took NASA 8 years to go from first entering space to landing on the moon. SpaceX is nowhere close to that and they’ve been launching rockets for 17 years.

              • Neato@kbin.social
                77·
                8 months ago

                Damn you clearly know nothing about technological development. Elon stands on the shoulders of all those who gave their lives in the past. He benefits from all the safety regulations.

                And still with all of that. The tens of billions of dollars the government hands out to him. And more than twice the time of the Space Race he had accomplished so little. How many successful rockets did NASA develop in that time? A lot more than SpaceX.

            • QuinceDaPence@kbin.social
              41·
              8 months ago

              Different design processes and NASA has to appease Congress who likes to cut funding if a rocket blows up.

              But the Design-build-test-break-redesign-etc process that SpaceX uses is cheaper, quicker, and gives more data.

            • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
              2·
              8 months ago

              It took 8 Years AND $25 billions ($248 billions adjusted to today’s dollar value).

              For comparison NASA awarded a contract for spacex to develop the Human Landing System, the value of the contract is $2.89 billions.

            • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
              11·
              8 months ago

              No, but the resources given and the requirements set are different. The Saturn V did not have to be reusable and was awarded two orders of magnitude more funding. Which is ultimately why it stopped being made.

    • dustyData@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      8 months ago

      … throw a bunch of money at a company because he ’s obsessed with Mars. wanted to justify sending money to some arm dealer Russian friends.

      • cole@lemdro.idEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        what? didn’t he start SpaceX because Russia WOULDN’T take his money?

        • stopthatgirl7@kbin.socialOP
          1·
          8 months ago

          IIRC, they wouldn’t take his money because he misunderstood the price they wanted, tried to bargain it down and lowball them, and ended up pissing them off so much they doubled the price.

    • YⓄ乙 @aussie.zoneEnglish
      41·
      8 months ago

      Sadly, Thats how capitalism work hence they keep using Musk’s name. Anyone with money is valuable in our economy.

    • Marbles@discuss.tchncs.de
      439·
      8 months ago

      This just false. Sure, he did not do everything alone but he has a huge hand in engineering concepts and design decisions. Lots of hate and complete misunderstanding how spaceship, spaceX and Musk work in this thread.

      • soloner@lemmy.world
        11·
        8 months ago

        The dude prefers reviewing source code on paper.

        Anyone who writes code knows that is not a practical way to review.

        Maybe in his time he got book smart about some physics/rocket concepts. That’s the least I would expect anyway. But that doesn’t mean he really has any expertise to offer to the product.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
          11·
          8 months ago

          I agree it makes no sense. A fair number of my clients are morons and about 2 or 3 times a year they want a printout of the code.

          • vind@lemmy.world
            131·
            8 months ago

            He doesn’t do shit. All of that is just him saying buzzwords he learnt from the actual engineers so he’d look smart.

    • MumboJumbo@lemmy.world
      444·
      8 months ago

      Actually kinda really successful 👍 All 33 engines were firing, the hot staging was successful. On both the first and second stages, it looks like the automatic FTS (flight termination system) was triggered. That would happen if it veered too far off of it’s approved flight path (don’t need it coming down over a populated region.) The only thing that didn’t happen that I was hopeful for was atmospheric re-entry - we really need to see how that heat shield works in practice.

      • urandom@lemmy.world
        112·
        8 months ago

        If the stage exploded due to the hot staging change, perhaps it won’t count as a success. But it’s too early to tell either way

        • Pennomi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          8 months ago

          Looked to me like the hot staging plus flip maneuver sent the 1st stage into a slow spin it couldn’t recover from using the ullage gas thrusters.

          • MumboJumbo@lemmy.world
            10·
            8 months ago

            A user in another thread pointed out that during relight, not all engines lit, and the ones that did started going back out.

            • Thrashy@lemmy.world
              6·
              8 months ago

              Scott Manley suggested the hot-stage combined with the fast flip maneuver may have caused fuel to slosh away from the intakes in the tank, leading to ingestion of gas bubbles in the fuel lines. Those would have damaged or destroyed engines as they worked their way into the turbo pumps, leading to the progressive engine-outs seen on the stream before the eventual catastrophic failure of the booster.

            • Peppycito@sh.itjust.works
              21·
              8 months ago

              I’m guessing they wanted to show the FTS works really good now and terminates at the first sign of something wrong. Last time it was doing those flips for quite a while.

      • llamacoffee@lemmy.world
        5·
        8 months ago

        It blew up about 3000 km/hr short of orbit, so thankfully all of it has burned up in Earth’s atmosphere already :)

  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world
    313·
    8 months ago

    Alright, let me clear something up.

    This is literally rocket science. The process to put humans into space is literally done this way, for this exact reason. They had two key primary objectives for this launch:

    1. Successful ignition and control of 33 raptor engines in first stage.
    2. Successful hot separation into second stage.

    The first stage separated entirely and gained plenty of distance before it did explode.

    The second stage flew for several minutes before the automated emergency flight termination kicked in and destroyed it.

    All of the data that they were recording will pinpoint the failures in the return of the first stage, and the destruction in the second stage. They would not have that data if they did not do this test and nothing went wrong.

    • MeanEYE@lemmy.world
      215·
      8 months ago

      Primary objective was things not to explode, which they did. Everything else you just said was repeated PR. Yes, it was a success, they wanted to throw hundreds of millions for no reason. More to the point, second stage blew up in low earth orbit, which is within reach of satellites. So your so called success is yet to be proven. It’s going to be weeks and months before we see the real effect of explosion propelled debris around the planet.

      • Player2@sopuli.xyz
        51·
        8 months ago

        Primary objective was to get further than last time, which they absolutely did. Not only were all the engines reliable for their first burn, they tested a successful hot separation, in flight ignition, and effective flight termination system. All of this was on top of the achievements they made last time and allowed Starship to reach space for the first time, making it reach past the N1 in only two attempts.

        It was a great success.

        PS. No it did not explode in orbit. The actual rocket scientists did think about this you know. The flight plan featured a suborbital track, and it splashed down safely in the ocean somewhere along it’s predicted path at most about an hour after launch.

  • dumdum666@kbin.social
    173·
    8 months ago

    It weirds me out how many people want to get a brain implant done by a company of this guy

    • Vanon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      61·
      8 months ago

      It would be very weird, if we could verify they weren’t shills or bots. Insane and desperate people. It was only “interesting” years ago, before he exposed himself as a fraud (and tortured animals during failed testing).

  • Vakbrain@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    62·
    8 months ago

    There’s no shame in highlighting what went right and still acknowledging what went terribly wrong.

    Censoring the latter prevents improvements. No need for fanboyism.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
      6·
      8 months ago

      On test flights, having something go terribly wrong is expected. This is the second test flight of a brand new vehicle system which also happens to be the largest and most complicated vehicle ever made. They also have half a dozen more vehicles already made and waiting to fly, each with improvements learned in manufacturing the previous one. They are behind their original schedule, for sure, but this mission was a huge success for SpaceX considering all of the things that did work.

  • pan_troglodytes@programming.devEnglish
    41·
    8 months ago

    eh… it looks like hot-staging still has some bugs to work out, but the 2nd stage worked just fine (and since that’s the part that matters, the end fate of the first stage is irrelevant)

    good test all in all

  • iterable@sh.itjust.works
    2·
    8 months ago

    I wonder what the simulation showed was going to happen compared to the actual flight. Would give you a real metric of progress.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      8 months ago

      If the simulation showed a problem, they could have fixed it before launch. I’m guessing they don’t have a enough data to make a super high fidelity integrated model for all phases of fight, so they’d break down the sections individually. But integration always brings extra challenges.

      • iterable@sh.itjust.works
        13·
        8 months ago

        So they don’t have a physicist on staff? Or several? We have known the math for rocket science for some time. What data is it they need? When even NASA in the sixties has simulators.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          8 months ago

          I’m sure they have tons. But we don’t know the full thermo areo dynamics at hypersonic speeds and complex geometries, especially their effect on unconventional control surfaces across huge temperature and speed ranges. Some military companies have even bought flights on electron to get high altitude hypersonic velocity data on how the air behaves in that regime.

      • Player2@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        8 months ago

        While the mission was similar in thrust profile to an orbital one, it was not an orbital mission. The vehicle broke down and landed about an hour after launch.

  • murmur@lemm.ee
    612·
    8 months ago

    He certainly didn’t have to be all anti-Semitic to deflect attention from this failure. It’s telling.