Originally Posted by
TURIN
Watched it last night, definately an 'uh oh' moment. 😳
Excellent analysis from Scott Manley as usual.
Yep, pretty obvious that there simply wasn't enough thrust - I surmised one engine either failed outright or wasn't producing much thrust, so Scott confirmed that. Agree with the kudos to the guidance team - pretty impressive that it was able to maintain control and leave the launch area.
Always wondered the same thing about the Space Shuttle. Apparently those boosters "could not fail"
In the Challenger aftermath, it came out that there was a USAF study that predicted that the odds of a catastrophic of a strap-on booster was about 1 in 50. IIRC, Challenger was SS flight number 35...
Also, there was a requirement that the solid boosters needed to ignite within a few milliseconds of each other - or the asymmetric thrust would rip the spacecraft apart... That's a non-trivial problem with ammonium percolate solid propellant motors.