Where is Fred Dibnah, when you need him?

Professionals don't cheer when a rocket goes bang. Or is that from a licenced Professional? Bloke or commercial payload on board?

They do when they half expected it to blow up on the pad.
This was a test flight, nothing on board.

Professionals don't cheer failures. Elon wasn't.

What other metrics can we use to measure professionalism? For me an important one is how much time and money it takes to get to an end objective. Based on that it is too early to tell for starship, but we will see.

Lots of early falcon failures yet it seems SpaceX are the professionals people go to for orbital launches.

Nobody is cheering at anybody. They have come a long way and they will move ahead. This is actually their strong side: A big apparatus, say NASA, is much more risk aware and moving ahead only slowly to avoid failures. Here is just one guy paying for it and he wants progress. High risk means big steps ahead. This is what happens now.

​​​​​​​After @elonmusk's tweet about the water-cooled plate, I started looking at the parts visible on-site and was able to figure this much out using accurate dimensions. Some parts are still missing but it's looking like this will be a combined system for deluge and pad cooling.…

A win, as excavation to add these has now already been done.

[A bit like reporting your elderly neighbour to the police that he has a body buried in the back garden, as a favor to save him the effort to dig the garden up himself]

This is a fair point - also important to remember that the Starship and Super Heavy vehicles they used for this test flight actually weren't all that refined. TPS full of gaps, etc. The newer TPS solutions on the newest Starships look infinitely better.

Models and simulations can only go so far before they need to be validated. But there will certainly be a lot more pressure on SpaceX now to nail the second OFT. If we don't see a perfect performance from the booster, there'll be many more heads turned. Certainly since Raptor should be performing a lot better than it is, though that could certainly be down to concrete flying everywhere and Stage 0 having some hiccups.
Fool me one, shame on you...

👀👀👀

During Elon’s twitter space he confirmed that FTS (Flight Termination System) was triggered and it took roughly 40 seconds for it to destroy the vehicle.

“The FTS system will need to be re-qualified before the next launch attempt”

Just for fun, I spent most of the day with our #Starship Flight Test 8K footage, tracking and stabilizing frame by frame (Auto tracking just couldn't handle it) from the Flight Termination Charge to explosion just to see if we could learn anything else. Shot by @considercosmos..

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Elon Musk Twitter Spaces discussion on SpaceX's first Starship launch.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1...410935808.html
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Here's a view from behind the fuel storage tanks.

At the end of a football match, if the team has battled hard but still lost, the crowd still cheers at the end of the game. They weren't cheering the destruction of the rocket, they were cheering the success of achieving a launch and the hard work the team had put in to get it that far. Also, remember, the SpaceX team is made up of very young professionals. They behave very differently to more mature folk like you and I 'probably' are.

Almost fixed already…

Super busy at the Starbase launch complex today. New doorway cutout in the Orbital Launch Mount. New stairs, scaffolding, interior work and OLM foundation work.

Earth Movers Excavate Under Orbital Launch Mount🚀

For the past few days at the #SpaceX #Starbase Orbital Launch Mount (OLM), earth moving machines have been excavating, clearing out, the crater under the OLM. They seem to want to dig it out before further work.

Water cooled layer for under the OLM made from the plates we have seen being built already with all the pipe work under and around the formwork this could channel water to other rain birds or diverter pipes.


https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....21603ea8c.jpeg
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@elonmusk confirmed what I have been speculating for the past few days during #Starship Spaces tonight. The water-cooled plate will not only provide a strong surface but also a "showerhead" deluge system. Holes across the surface will release water aiding in sound suppression.

Pile driving machines showing up to the launch complex today. Now the real work begins….

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​​​​​​​There have been many questions and concerns about the water-cooled steel plate that is planned to be installed under the OLM. I’ll go over some details about it in this thread and maybe ease some of the concerns. There will be some speculation in this towards the end. (1/n)

First priority to get renewed flight clearance….
t appears that SpaceX may have performed a Flight Termination test on the Booster 6 test article. This rupture occurred near the common dome. The test article was filled with water and likely pressurized to flight loads.

No way to confirm the details yet.

👀👀👀

​​​​​​​Raptor test firing into a water cooled steel plate 🔥