Build fast and iterate...that's their model, all on a budget. This isn't being built on a 4+ billion dollars per launch Artemis budget here. It's SpaceX playing Kerbal Space Program in real life. SpaceX doesn't have (and probably doesn't feel the need to due to the incredible expenditure needed) a full size test facility like NASA does at their Stennis testing center. They prefer to test by actually launching things (because who knows, there "could" be a chance that everything works like it was intended the first time).

I'm rather surprised it made it as far as it did, and even more surprised that it wasn't a catastrophic failure of the actual rocket....it seems to be a failed stage separation mechanism that doomed the flight. In SpaceX's video of the launch, the camera's switch to the internal shot of the interstage section and the commentators are clearly expecting stage separation, and if you look really close you can even see what appears to be explosive bolts firing off around the perimeter of the joint between the stages, but it stays stuck together like someone welded it together solid. Some are hypothesizing the sheer vibrations and tremendous force of the launch bent the interconnecting section mount rings together somehow in a way not anticipated.

The booster had never been tested as a system for a full flight burn....it just had a few short static fire tests. Simulators and computer models only get you so far with the millions of variables in a real world. The booster itself seemed to perform rather well and even tried a boost-back return burn like it was programmed to, it just wasn't expecting the Starship section to still be attached, resulting in several interesting spiraling somersault maneuvers before the flight termination was triggered once it fell back to around 30km in altitude.

I anticipate at least the next 3 or 4 launches to fail spectacularly in some way as well as new "bugs" in the system are found with this kind of design methodology, but they'll iterate and redesign through the issues on the fly, just like they did with the Falcon rockets. Already the next booster being prepped does away with the hydraulic gimble system on the Raptor engines in favor of faster, less complicated ones actuated by electric motors. I'm guessing the next Starship section for the next launch also won't be as complete (maybe no heat shielding and flaps) as well to save on costs until they can guarantee the reliable separation of the sections and then move on to testing the next stage of flight.

I'm more concerned with the crater left under the launch pad than the rocket failure itself. As repairs and modifications to that will most likely take longer than design changes to the booster and Starship.

quote Originally posted by rinselberg: There's a report that a SpaceX spokesperson actually described what happened as a "rapid, unscheduled disassembly" of the launch vehicle. Ya' think?

quote Originally posted by Notorio: I saw that quote on NBC and shook my head. It's this kind of Big Tech, Gen Z, doublespeak that really is sad. They don't want anybody to 'feel bad.' I imagine the Safe Spaces, Emotional Coaches, and Petting Zoos at SpaceX are very busy today. What kind of statement would Gene Kranz have released?

Gene Kranz would have probably said the same thing. "Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly" is rocket geek speak that has been used for decades. It's found even in McDonnel Douglas documentation describing a Saturn-IVB stage rupturing during a test in the 1960's where the term used was RUDE, as in a Rapid, Unplanned Disassembly Event.

I'm pretty also sure Elon would fire anyone that requires a safe space or an emotional coach.

[This message has been edited by kslish (edited 04-21-2023).]

The newly expatriated German, Dr. Wernher von Braun, like an astrophysicist Mary Poppins who materialized out of nowhere to teach the people of Huntsville, Alabama, how to make rockets...

This isn't directly related in any way to SpaceX, but I've come here to put a spotlight on this truly inspired and literary remark which I read recently in an article in the New York Times:

"Why Do Stanford, Harvard and NASA Still Honor a Nazi Past?"
Lev Golinkin for the New York Times; December 13, 2022.
https://www.nytimes.com/202...nazi-scientists.html

quote “Dr. Wernher von Braun and his team of rocket scientists transformed Huntsville, Ala., known in the 1950s as the ‘Watercress Capital of the World,’ into a technology center that today is home to the second-largest research park in the United States,” proclaims the “About Us” section of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center — a Smithsonian-affiliated museum and the home of the renowned Space Camp program. (A representative of the center said, “We are in a current redevelopment of the rocket center’s website and affiliated Space Camp pages,” and that the center intends to provide additional context.) In the meantime, von Braun is lauded at practically every turn: on the Space Camp website, on the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s school history page, in the description of the Dr. Wernher von Braun Scholarship, even in a 2019 speech by Robert Altenkirch, who was then the university president — none of which mention Nazis or slave labor. (The school does have a web page about rocketry and slave labor that mentions von Braun.) As for the von Braun Center performing arts venue, a spokesperson for the city of Huntsville said that there is “an ongoing effort to provide greater historical context and information” on the center’s website. But how long does it take to correct the record? The impression one gets from these sanitized histories is that this was a man who had materialized out of nowhere, with no discernible past, like an astrophysical Mary Poppins who had come to teach the people of Huntsville how to make rockets. It seems it is less common to note a Nazi past than to look past it. Such is the case with the NASA Kennedy Space Center’s visitor complex in Florida, which is home to the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Conference Facility. In the official NASA biography of Debus there is but a short, vague paragraph about his life in Germany. On June 24, the Kennedy Space Center’s director, Janet Petro, accepted the National Space Club Florida Committee’s Dr. Kurt H. Debus Award; NASA’s webpage celebrating the event referenced Debus’s astronomical achievements, noting nothing of his SS membership and intimate involvement with building the V-2.

I want to read the Mary Poppins reference in its original context from the article in the New York Times

I'm not trying to seed a discussion about "Operation Paperclip" and the American effort to bring the scientists and engineers who were part of Hitler's Germany to the United States after the war. Not at all. I just think this invocation of "Mary Poppins" is off the charts in this context, as far as literary acumen. A wordsmith's crowning achievement. A literal tour de force of unforgettable erudition. A veritable Fort Knox gold bullion treasury's worth of word coinage.

As far as why I have chosen this forum thread, my thinking is that it's a thread that is of interest to people who have an interest in rockets and space exploration, and that would logically extend to the history of rockets and space exploration, even as far back as the years that came in the immediate aftermath of World War Two. And so I think that no one could fault me in any serious way for glomming onto this thread and using it as a backdrop for this "selfless" act of sharing with the forum.

Am I wrong? (A reference to some recent goings on in the Politics & Religion section that go back to the recent episode involving the Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams.)


As MSNBC weekday morning anchor José Díaz-Balart (Caballero) always ends his program, "Thank you for the privilege of your time."

[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 04-23-2023).]