IMFU - It is evident that you and your son get it! I am honored to share the atmosphere and all the stars above with such good people!

With Enduring Respect,

- Ed

The first re-use of a booster, I'll chalk it up as a success.

Well done Space X.

'Successes' like that do eat into the cash pot

NASA had the Cold War behind it - I'm not sure what Musk has behind his desire to send a few clowns to the Moon

I listened to Sputnic Fly over the planet
Had watched Gagarin solo on TV after he became the first man in space - the greatest solo since Otto Lilienthal

Booster was lost during the transition from the high angle of attack recovery attitude to the vertical for engine restart. I presume it either broke up from stress from aerodynamic forces caused by the fuel sloshing or an engine blew due to cavitation caused by fuel issues. Have to wait for the debrief.

Starship made it through a full engine burn, though there were commentary remarks about a fire which may have been caused by the same previous problem, even after introducing nitrogen purging etc, which may have caused damage/fuel leakage causing the loss of attitude control due to outgassing.

PEZ dispenser door continues to cause problems and may need a redesign.

Not too worried about the booster - they pushed it to the limit and know how to bring it back safely when required.

Starship is a worry - that’s 4 flights where they haven’t managed to get data on the various types of heat shield tiles and structure during re-entry so they will have to have, at least, one more flight into the Indian Ocean before even thinking of a return flight and catch.

They haven’t managed one remaining previously flown booster, (B15, March) which they can expend on a water landing if they want to repeat with a modified profile for a water landing plus two remaining block 2 boosters (B16 and B17) before they get to the Block 3 boosters with an integrated staging ring and Raptor 3 engines.

There are currently 4 Block 2 Starship upper stages at various stages of construction (36-40) with 36 in the bay having its flaps and heat tiles installed. The Block status of the Block 3, tankers and lunar landers is an unclear.

Am I being simple?

Isn't the point of the throw away 'rocket' just that?

You don't have to make it strong because the fuel creates the integrity until it is done with?

Why do we have to recycle what is essentially junk?

Is this all 'clever but pointless'?

You re being simple….

Neither stage is throw-away, both booster and Starship upper stage are supposed to recover, turn and relaunch on multiple occasions.

The booster only has a mission length of 6-8 minutes and is caught back in the launch tower, the aim is to refuel and launch several times a day.

There are several Starships models, some are designed to carry payload into orbit (e.g. a couple of hundred Starlink satellites) and then recover, be caught in a tower and relaunched. No set schedule as missions might last days or even weeks. Others are designed as lunar landers and will not have heat tiles or flaps but will have extendable legs; others are tankers and, if not planned to recover, may be adapted to be converted into habitat modules for space stations.

Nope, the Shuttle re-used the RS25 engines however the servicing costs ultimately made a mockery of the economics. (They pushed the engineering too far and escaped a disaster by the skin of their teeth on one launch with a recycled engine but that's another story.)

Today, the economics of re-use are well proven. Even the Chinese are working on reusable SpaceX clones.

Have a look at the costs:
- Space Shuttle (partially reusable), 27,500 kg to low earth orbit at $61,720 per kg payload.
- Saturn V (not reusable), 140,000 kg to low earth orbit (the numbers are different if you take it to the moon), at $5,200 per kg payload
- Falcon 9, (significant part reusable), 22,800 kg to low earth orbit at $2,720 per kg.
- Falcon Heavy (significant part reusable), 63,800 kg to low earth orbit at $1,410 per kg.

The costs go down significantly due to reusability. The numbers would not be that low for throw-away versions of the Falcon family.

Source: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20200001093/downloads/20200001093.pdf

I certainly got the impression that there was some internal fire visible in the engine bay shots of Ship's ascent, I wonder if that was significant?
However speculation by mere mortals like us on the causes of the failures is utterly pointless, how could we possibly guess?

Re the repeated failures, I'm reminded of Colin Chapman's radical approach to Formula One design in the 1960s which went along the lines of keep lightening it until it breaks, then beef it up a bit until it doesn't. He got there in the end and wiped the floor with the opposition. It cost a lot in breakages - including broken drivers in his case, but it worked well. Spacex have a similar mindset.
The technique is vastly quicker than traditional methods of development even if costly in hardware and combined with their brilliant innovative approach to design is making huge advances at a tremendous pace. Bear in mind that we (globally) all fund this indirectly by using Paypal, Twitter, Starlink and buying Swasticars etc. They laughed at and criticised Stevenson, Brunel and the Wright brothers in their time too...

The flight was always intended to push the parameters to the limits. I was really impressed by the concept of using the hot staging to flip the booster. It was very clever however I wonder if that caused the starship to sustain some damage through the exhaust being reflected back into the engine bay ?

Speculation by we mortals keeps the level of interest where it needs to be. Apollo suffered from apathy as well as budget cuts.

Well done SpaceX for upgrading the video feeds to 4K.

According to Musk, now they have the multi-launch licence in place, the time between successive test flights is planned to reduce to just 3-4 weeks.

So expect the next test flight in late June.

”Quick analysis of B14-2 anomaly.

Explosion originated from the aft section, not the midsection of the vehicle. Potential of hard shutdown having occurred. Speed at RUD approx 250kmh.

I recommend viewing at the highest quality setting and on an HDR display because even with correction it's still difficult to see some features.“

….”Slight correction on the speed: I was under the impression that the WAI footage was in real time. Misunderstanding on my part. Actual speed at RUD should be about 420-430kmh.”……

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0bf25f3789.png

Link includes photos and video. Big Highlights from @ElonMusk's talk:

@SpaceX intends to launch 5 Starships to Mars in 2026. Details at the bottom of the post. - The entire talk took place adjacent to a Block 3 integrated Hot-stage section.

- Elon reiterates that @StarbaseTX being on a public highway is "Pretty cool", and that anyone can come and see the largest flying object ever built.

- Starbase's Giga Bay will be built to manufacture 1,000 Starships per year - We saw the first render of a Starship being caught in Pad B's chopsticks.

- We saw the first up-close video of Raptor 3 firing at @SpaceX's McGregor Test Site (of course we've seen hours of Raptor 3 testing from a distance on @NASASpaceflight 's McGregor Live).

We saw an updated render of Orbital Refuelling. This now features 4 extended interfaces on the chaser ship.

- The "Next Gen Starship" will have 3 gridfins on the Super Heavy Booster, rotated 90° from each other, with no gridfin on one side.

- A 9-engined Starship has not been ruled out (we even saw a 9-engined render), but Starship Block 3 will only have six Raptor 3 engines (3 RVac, 3 Sea-level)

- Starship Block 3 is pretty much the Block 2 numbers from April 2024's All-hands talk. Block 3: Ship 52.1m, Booster 72.3m, 124.4m combined "Future Starship": Ship 61m, Booster 81m, 142m combined

- The rocket launch at the end of this year "will be capable of making life multiplanetary" - @SpaceX intends to launch 5 landers to Mars in 2026, carrying 10 tonnes of payload each, including @Tesla_Optimus robots.

- 2028/29 will see 20 landers, carrying 75t each.

- 2030/31 will see 100 landers, carrying 150t each.

- 2033 will see 500 landers, carrying 300t each (that is 150,000 Metric Tonnes of cargo total) - Mars Base location candidates are currently being identified around the Arcadia region, with large ice deposits.

- @Starlink will be deployed into Martian orbit to provide internet communications on the Red Planet. Earth-Mars latency will be 3 minutes on a good day, 22 minutes when Earth & Mars are on opposite sides of the Sun.

I have no idea what any of that means in the last but one post, is there a more straightforward explanation ? What caused the shockwave, was there a new engine shutdown method ? The propellant tanks would have been close to empty so the fuel in the bottom of the tanks would have become weightless and not slammed forwards. What have I missed ?

Real Problem of Starship?
 

Finally, people digging past the Musk bs:


Basic summary:

By making the Starship out of steel the ship is too heavy to start with and the Raptor engines are not making their Musk promised thrust. End result is the current Starship has a payload to orbit less than the Falcon 9. The monotonous string of failures are being caused by weight saving measures that reduce the robustness of the ship’s engines and fuel system leading to leaks, fires, and explosions.

I used to like watching the Angry Astronaut, he brought a non sycophantic attitude to space reporting. Then he went off at a tangent pushing utter nonsense about UFO/UAPs.
Ever since then I just can't take a thing he says seriously. All this BS about SS being the wrong material has been done to death.
Nothing to see here.

Was it really necessary to bring the myth of Musk being a Nazi into this discussion?
Shame on you :ugh:

Well if it looks like a duck, salutes like a duck and supports duckis parties.... It's a duck. 😁

Hark! Do I hear muffled squawks of self-righteous indignation from an ostrich with its head firmly buried - in a land where megalomania, total disregard for rule of law at governmental levels, Roman salutes and promotion of eugenics goes more or less unremarked?
Shame indeed.

Here is some footage from within the Starship engine bay at the point of stage separation. The "flip" caused by partially blocking the exhaust path worked perfectly. That is a technology first. The clearance between the engines and the top of the booster tank is surprisingly small. Well done SpaceX.

Apologies for the lousy commentary.

Good video, I thought the commentary was fine.
I wonder if the old Russian rocket designers are looking at that 'new' permanent hot staging structure with a wry smile. It looks very much like theirs. If it ain't broke don't fix it.
The flip assist is very cool though.

I thought the commentary was rather flat and stilted. Yep, the Chinese have used it too although both seem to have allowed more room between the stages, I wonder of SpaceX have been a little too clever. The next versions will have an angled lattice instead of the current straight version which will not detach from the booster i.e. no hot staging ring to discard.

The next flight could be less than a month away, we live in magical times.

The commentary sounded to me like it was text fed to a speech generator

Let's face it, Spacex's exploits have hardly been noted for their intelligent or coherent commentary.

Well, it had at least surprising nuances here and there ("HAL! Open the pod bay door ...")

A closer view of Booster 16's 33 Raptor engine nozzles while being lifted onto the launch mount this morning for static fire testing in preparation for upcoming Starship test flight 10.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....68070430e7.png

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....9421c889d.jpeg
​​​​​​​

VideoSTATIC FIRE! Booster 16 fires up in preparation for Starship Flight 10.

The question now is will Starship ever get another launch license? Not that the Orange wonder is a vindictive sort.

................
Video

VideoStarship 36 has performed a single engine static fire test today in preparation for upcoming Starship test flight 10. A full 6 engine static fire is still expected before rolling back to megabay 2.

Elon Musk:

FAA advisory.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....5c465ef078.png

Ship #36 is no more.

It'll be interesting to see how much damage has been done to the ground installations (fuel and O2 storage for instance) and whether it was wise to have placed them so close and apparently exposed to the pad. Would this have implications for the fundamental layout of the launch sites too?

SpaceX Statement:

😁😁😁 I prefer the last one…..

​​​​​​​

…………..

The fact that this is still burning is a very bad sign. Based on personal experience this is an indication that the methane isolation valves are stuck in the open position.

In these situations...emergency services will not approach the site. They will allow it to burn itself out because they have no way of predicting what will happen. This is basically like having an uncontrolled gas well.

Not trying to overhype the situation...but as a petroleum engineer these are my thoughts as I watch this.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....d733447b87.png
​​​​​​​

Here’s the aftermath of the Ship 36 explosion last night at Massey’s test site.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....1ee88871a9.png

https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f0031ec3d2.png

https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....380dae5731.png
​​​​​​​