Agree 100%. Even the NASA pre-packaged soundbite on a normal launch is excruciating. Why not try enthusing everyone with little known facts ? I do a few STEM talks each year (next subject, the unmanned moon landings) and have covered the history and science of rocket engines. Telling the audience that the fuel pumps of the Saturn V required 40,000 horsepower or 3 times the amount of energy of an entire Formula 1 grid, keeps the audience's attention.

Whatever happened to "the vehicle has cleared the tower" ? Maybe I'm just becoming an old fart but I would be explaining the mach shockwave pattern in the exhaust plume and why the plume changes throughout the flight. Nobody gives two hoots about "awesome", we can see that for ourselves thanks. Try explaining why the sound "crackles", you will captivate the interested and the uninterested will go back to their gaming.

(caution, sarcastic humor to follow):

Here is a rundown of how 13 major news sources covered Elon Musk's latest successful launch:

• CNN: Musk Chooses Space Exploration Over Ending World Hunger
• Salon: I Lived It: I Inhaled Musk's Rocket's Fumes And They Killed Me
• Snopes: Fact check: did Elon Musk's rocket successfully launch? Mostly false.
• Not the Bee: EEEEK! ELON MUSK LAUNCHED A ROCKET INTO SPACE AND WE ARE HERE FOR IT HIT THE DAB!
• MSNBC: Musk Attacks Ocean With Rocket
• DailyWire: Help Elon Musk Conquer Outer Space By Subscribing To DailyWire+!
• HuffPost: Why Going To Space Is Rooted In Racism And Misogyny
• Fox News: What The Latest SpaceX Launch Means For Trump's Chances In November
• Vox: We Speak With The Indigenous Alcoholics Who Could've Been Given Free Healthcare With The Money Spent On Elon's Latest Launch
• TMZ: ELONgate: Check Out The Size Of This Rocket!
• New York Times: Musk Launches Rocket In Bid To Spread Hate Speech To Other Planets
• InfoWars: SpaceX Rocket Makes Contact With Aliens On Orders From Deep State Gay Frogs
• Deadspin: 404 ERROR

How 13 Different News Outlets Covered Elon Musk’s Successful SpaceX Launch | Babylon Bee

On a serious note, complete agreement with B Frasier's post.

Surprised it lasted so long….

​​​​​​​Starship re-enter Earth's atmosphere, real & 3D views.

There are a couple of independent you tubers that are much more switched on to this sort of thing. The Everyday Astronaut, Tim Dodd, almost always explains why the plume expands for example. His deep dives in to 'rocket science' are well worth a look.

Scott Manley is the best by a country mile, the others are mostly excitable "kidults" who have facial hair and yet still live with mum and dad. Nobody should ever wear a hat indoors unless they happen to be a bishop or a monarch.

Or an astronaut inside a landing module :-)

Scott is very good, I agree. However he hasn't as far as I know made any videos on how rocket engines work, comparing fuel types and ISP.

Just ran out of gas?

If so, it’s an easy fix….

I'm not so sure, those final few seconds of oscillations need sorting out.

Depends on the cause.

If caused by windshear then they can lower the permitted limit a5 the landing point.

If caused by engines randomly shutting down to fuel exhaustion then having more landing fuel (that might be usable fuel in the system due to baffles etc rather than total fuel might be inaccessible).

Did the oscillations start during engine restart? I thought it started to go wrong well before, the grid fins were really working hard, over controlling perhaps.

“On a panel at the Satellite conference, Gwynne Shotwell said SpaceX should be ready to fly Starship again in about six weeks. Says teams are still reviewing the data from the last flight and that flight 4 would not have satellites on board.

She added that the goal for Starship this year is to reach orbit, deploy satellites and recover both stages. And of course to launch Falcon 9 148 times.“…

https://spacenews.com/spacex-plannin...arship-flight/

SpaceX planning rapid turnaround for next Starship flight

WASHINGTON — SpaceX hopes to conduct the next launch of its Starship vehicle as soon as early May, a schedule that will depend on how quickly it can get an amended launch license…..

That schedule will depend on completing a mishap investigation that must be approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, which would then have to modify the existing launch license for Starship before the next launch.

Speaking at the Space Capitol III event by Payload March 18, Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, said he did not anticipate that investigation to turn up any major issues that could significantly delay the next launch.

“It ended in what we call a mishap, but at the end of the day we deem it a successful launch attempt,” he said, because it resulted in no injuries or property damage. “SpaceX was able to collect a great deal of data from that launch.”

He said he expected SpaceX to quickly provide a mishap investigation report, noting that after the second Starship flight the company completed that report in several weeks. “We expect the same to be the case here. We didn’t see anything major. We don’t think there’s any critical systems for safety that were implicated.”

The FAA has updated SpaceX’s Starship launch license after every flight to date to reflect changes in the mission, such as the different suborbital trajectory used on the most recent flight. However, Coleman said the agency wants to move to a process where the license is valid for “portfolio of launches” rather than individual ones. That is particularly important, he added, because SpaceX is planning six to nine more Starship launches this year.

That is part of a broader effort to streamline the launch licensing process to address criticism from industry and Congress that the FAA is moving too slowly on approving launch licenses under a new set of regulations known as Part 450. Coleman announced at the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 21 that the agency would establish an aerospace rulemaking committee, or SpARC, to formally collect industry input on ways to improve Part 450.…

Ship 29 has rolled out to the launch complex for upcoming static fire testing as soon as Monday.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f4f68e566d.png

​​​​​​​Full-duration static fire of all six Raptor engines on Flight 4 Starship

Chopsticks and the launch pad need a bit more TLC. I think 6 weeks is optimistic.

Seek and ye shall find, he has made quite a few. For example...........

And this one which describes how the Saturn F1 engine combustion was stabilised.

Good stuff, I'll check them out when I get chance.

Pedantic reply: it is no longer necessary for crewed launches. In NASA's day clearing the tower was formally the point at which the launch controllers at Cape Canaveral handed over control of the flight to the mission controllers in Houston. SpaceX control their flight operations for a lot longer for ISS flights and of course for the duration of private flights.

Subjective reply: no sensible person is going to object to hearing it. If you watch Spaceflight Now coverage of SpaceX crewed launches then the announcer says it because the tower is still there. Or, as of very recently, towers plural as two of their pads now have towers and crew access arms.

Personally I wish that all of the SpaceX presenters would learn that it is OK to shut up occasionally.

Or learn to make their commentary interesting. For example, tell us about the loss of mass per second when the engines are at full chat. Tell us the rate of acceleration and how that increases as the fuel is used up. Explain why the tanks are pressurised or why the exhaust plume is pencil shaped at sea level. There's a lot of science to be explained just by the colour of the exhaust plumes. I do a few STEM talks each year and try to avoid saying anything that the room has heard before. For example, the Shuttle orbital manoeuvring engines are derived from the Apollo SM hypergolic engines that braked the spacecraft into lunar orbit and accelerated it on the way home.

Perhaps I have a retirement job opportunity but I doubt I would last long after too many "clucking hell, that's loud" comments.

Static fire of a single Raptor engine using the header tanks on Flight 4 Starship.

From Starbase to Cape Canaveral: The first Super Heavy booster for future Starship launches from Florida arrived at Port Canaveral this morning.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a04ebe1c2b.png

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I'm assuming that's an April fool gag?

It is.

Some interesting notes:

Flight 4 in a month or so. Aim to get through the high heating regime. Into the ocean at a controlled spot - a virtual tower (soft water landing technique).

If that works, "Flight 5 will land on the Tower" (catch the booster with the chopsticks).

99 percent of all mass from Earth to orbit when Starship is flying (fully operational).

Goal to get 200 tons to orbit with full reusability.

Two pinpoint soft landings are required for Ship for catches. Maybe next year.

Two Towers by sometime next year. Two at Starbase. Two at the Cape - first operation middle of next year (will be 39A).

Planning to build another roughly six boosters and ships and that production rate will increase a lot next year. That's why we're building the giant factory.

Per Mars, need more ships than boosters. - "aim to ramp production to pretty high numbers, ultimately probably a ship every, like multiple ships per day".

Next year aiming to demonstrate ship-to-ship propellant transfer.

Lunar Starship - "we need landing legs. And you don't need a heat shield and you don't need flaps because there's no atmosphere. So the Moon ship would be specialized".

Performance - "we've made dramatic progress on every level for Starship has evolved from, you know, optimistically 185 tons to 280".

"We'll aim to get the booster engines over 330 tons of thrust, which would mean 10,000 tons of total thrust at liftoff. Raptor 3 also will not need a heat shield".

Cost: "The Starship 3 (much taller version) will be 400 times more payload for less than the cost of a Falcon 1. Ultimately, I think we might be able to get the cost per flight to Earth orbit down to around $2 million or $3 million".

Lots about Mars Base Alpha.

Long-term - "we'll probably have some offshore launch sites".

I’m reminded of the concept that generations of machinery start off being very complicated and end up looking very simple - but it’s just the sophistication of the engineering being at a much more basic level…

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d8280b31b0.png

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....bebeba2794.png

Animation of booster landing and capture…The update included near-term priorities for Starship that will unlock its ability to be fully and rapidly reusable, the core enabler for transforming humanity’s ability to send large amounts of payload to orbit and beyond

​​​​​​​Static fire of the Flight 4 Super Heavy booster

That's impressive. 3 weeks from launch to static fire!

https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2024...-future-focus/

As IFT-4 prepares for launch, Starship’s future is coming into focus

https://wccftech.com/spacexs-fourth-...nasa-official/

SpaceX’s Fourth Starship IFT-4 Test Is On Track For May Reveals NASA Official

With April nearly over, SpaceX's highly anticipated fourth Starship test flight remains on schedule for a May test attempt, according to comments made by a NASA official earlier today.

NASA and SpaceX are working together to ensure that Starship, the world's largest rocket, can support the agency's multi billion dollar effort to explore the Moon under the Artemis program.

On this front, NASA's deputy associate administrator for the Moon to Mars program, Amit Kshatriya, shared the latest details for Starship at an Advisory Council meeting held earlier today, where he outlined that the fourth Starship test flight is currently scheduled to take place next month…..

At the meeting, NASA's Kshatriya shared that, as of now, the space agency is hoping that the fourth SpaceX Starship test flight will take place by the end of May.

His comments build on statements made by SpaceX's president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell, who had taken the lead in March to share that the fourth Starship test flight was being targeted for May…..

The March Starship launch also saw SpaceX run a crucial test for NASA to transport propellant within the vehicle's tanks. Kshatriya commented that he believes that the test was successful by all means, but a month after the test, NASA is still evaluating the data to make a definitive conclusion.

He added that the crucial Starship un-crewed lunar landing test, which is scheduled before the first crew board the ship, will now also require SpaceX to demonstrate that the spaceship can lift off from the lunar surface to the lunar orbit…..

Sky crane delivering HVAC units to Starfactory.

Super Heavy Booster 11 is moving to the launch complex tonight to prepare for the upcoming test flight 4.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....a5d5a48cf7.png


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....e769547c70.png

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S29 has left the build site, following B11's barely disturbed footprints, and headed towards the chopsticks for stacking on the giant's shoulders.

​​​​​​​ This is shaping up to be a not-your-usual-quiet-Sunday at Starbase.

An incident with Starship 31 last night which will probably drop it out of the planned launch sequence.

Experimenting with a new type of hot thruster?

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....c0429a4bc8.png

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1035140021.png
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ICYMI: SpaceX bought a Boeing 737-800 from Air China. It's main purpose is shuttle staff between Los Angeles and Brownsville, to support the Starship efforts.

In mid-Feb it had it's first operational flight and this is the mission patch to celebrate.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b239f0e0d.jpeg

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....26fbc02f91.png
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Starship flight 4 full stack…..

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d08b67283f.png

Still no news on the launch date though.

Wet Dress Rehearsal tomorrow?

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....b04655db08.png