Posted on 04/20/2023 5:32:06 AM PDT by know.your.why
Little shrimp cries out once more...
But of course.
“the scars on my back are so thick the newb/fanboy attacks of my righteous critique are just another day in the life of a blue-state”
Like you I live in a blue state—surrounded by an army of brainwashed NPCs.
Like you I laugh at critics here—at least they try to get it right—the locals where I live cannot even ask the right questions—forget about getting the right answers.
I just saw a couple of videos of the aftermath of the launch. There were a couple of shots of Stage 0, or the launch pad..
Holy freaking cow.
The thrust from those 33 Raptors basically blew the bottom of the pad to smithereens. There was a huge crater under the pad, with rebar exposed. It’s now being speculated that in the 8 seconds the vehicle was held down before liftoff, the flying concrete may have damaged the first stage, which may be why 3, and later 6 engines weren’t working at liftoff.
As it stands, the tank farm next to the pad sustained damage from the flying debris.
One of the things that Elon said they wanted to avoid was building a flame deflector or a flame trench. Because of the ground and the water table at Boca Chica, that may be a problem, especially if SpaceX wants to launch another one “in a few months” (as Elon said in a Tweet yesterday).
No kidding. Masked while driving solo, too.
Right. I saw some of it as soon as I watched the launch the 2nd time. (I was actually more wondering about the extremely slow liftoff.) The quite possible engine(s) damage then started getting mentioned by more knowledgeable observers (than I).
Recovered rocket debris, if some can be recovered, might still lend clues. Or perhaps some of the telemetry will contain a few clues. SpaceX should know what they are looking for.
OTOH, I wonder why the issue did not present itself at the static test firing?
You still seem to be missing the point. SpaceX launched a rocket that contained quite a significant number of “previous generation” parts and systems in order to gain data that can be applied to the present generation rocket and its systems & parts (some, not all!), make corrections, and so on.
Saturn 5 was literally, I think, a combination of genius, huge application of resources, relative simplicity at cost-no-object, and some luck.
True, more of this “Super Heavy” + Starship development “could” be handled by modeling and other non-flight testing to destruction, but, as systems get more and more complex, trying to handle all the interactions and foresee how and what to test in less than a full scale manner becomes ever more difficult. And, speaking from experience as a former product design and development engineer, of much less complex systems, who in the latter half of his career either did an enormous amount of such testing himself, or was involved or privy to such efforts (the last smallish company (300 employees) I did consulting work for did subsystem or full system destructive testing on an almost 24/7/365 schedule — and they had the most advanced modeling programs in the industry.)
One problem is that some of those modeling programs even with very fast very powerful computers simply take a long time (days) to run the simulations on seemingly relatively “simple” parts or subsystems alone, and it takes VERY long times to set up the simulations (set up is still dependent on human capacities to enter all (hopefully!) the relevant information. NASA of this century takes the path of modeling, modeling, modeling, and then seemingly countless delays and fixes even after a full assembly is built for launch. SpaceX takes the approach of “let’s launch what we actually can assemble & launch now”, at high risk, and shortcut a lot of the tedious modeling and “takes forever” developmental work with actual performance (and hopefully flight) data, which may even reveal an unexpected (except of course in hindsight) problem no one would think to model.
Both approaches are valid, and both are in reality blends. (I’m quite sure SpaceX does millions of hours of modeling each year.) The difference is, Elon is determined to get to Mars in his lifetime.
Or, in my case, the Marketing Dept. damn well wanted that product ready for sale by next November, or, the Customer Service Dept. damn well wanted a problem showing up in the field (never underestimate “creative” customer abuse!) solved yesterday.
You discount the data, indicating you do NOT understand how it crucially feeds into SpaceX’s developmental process. (Which has been incredibly successful with the Falcon series rockets.) Literally anything past the tower WAS a big success, as no one has ever even tried launching a rocket this size...
Besides, who even cares about the TV panel? Not me.
Saturn V had several close calls, ever hear of POGO? Apollo 13?
Something you really aren't getting is that the sort of development SpaceX does expects failure during development. They were on booster 7 and ship 24 and most of the ones they have build have been scrapped without ever being used. Yes, 100% reliability is the most important goal, but they also need reusability and affordability.
If operational costs and availability are not important, you do what NASA does and pick a bad design, mostly for political reasons, then spend a crap-ton of money only on reliability. They don't care if it costs a billion dollars to launch and can only launch every five years. What they care about is not looking bad on TV so they can please armchair quarterbacks like you.
Little sh*t still sh*t posting... Keep on little sh*t...
Also... What happened to Saturns 1-4... This was Elon’s SA–1–4...
Very interesting comments by Musk regarding just that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ycYCtjWtE
0:32 in vid. The engr. who made that call may be sweating a bit...
Can you elucidate on the details (ground and water table)?
How did this guy get so close?
Thanks! interesting about the steel plates. I hope that does the trick.
Yes. Thanks for the vid link. Musk said it was 50 percent chance of blowing up, and was sweating bullets that it would clear the pad. My understanding is that Texas is a test site during development, and that the pad in Florida is and will be more robust with trenches, flame diverters, etc. The test site in Texas is a facility that can be repaired and upgraded repeatedly during test flights. But the government environmentalists impose limits on what can be implemented on the launch pad due to the water table and beach nearby. SpaceX ended up polluting the area anyway, what with chunks of concrete and sand hitting the beach and gulf waters. NASA has some worrying to do about the SpaceX launch pad in Florida being so close to other pads (ULA at 41, and others nearby) - if an explosion were to happen on the pad.
Watched it from S. Padre. Unbelievable.
They put the cameras there beforehand then evacuated.
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