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SpaceX go boom!


Mr Spock

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35 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

We need to worry about here and now not a few decades in time, they way things are going there won’t be decades in time….😮☹️

Again, why can't we do both?   I guarantee you that the technologies that are being developed now in programs like SpaceX, the engineers that are gaining experience, will all be making positive contributions to other problems in other fields now. Science and technology never develops isolated in stovepipes, gains in one field cross fertilise into others.  Musk's business model of fail fast and learn for example has already been mimicked by a number of fusion start-up companies.  The solutions to climate change, plastic pollution, water stress, food production are not going to appear in short order but will emerge over decades. 

Jim 

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1 hour ago, SamAndrew said:

Curious what you consider to be the damage done? Bringing internet to the whole world at the expense of a few trails in some astro photos (that can be stacked out) is something I can live with.

Starlink has not brought the internet to the whole world, nor will it! The damage I'm referring to is further congestion of the low Earth orbit, I made no reference to astro photos :( 

Jim 

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33 minutes ago, SamAndrew said:

I literally quoted you. Your posts are contradictory.

Why, starlink is a completely different project to this latest epic fail, i said that starlink was at least giving people access to things they would not have otherwise, and that this latest attempt was a complete waste of money, where is the contradiction….??

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26 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Why, starlink is a completely different project to this latest epic fail, i said that starlink was at least giving people access to things they would not have otherwise, and that this latest attempt was a complete waste of money, where is the contradiction….??

Agreed they are different in the sense that starlink is a satellite constelation, and this is a heavy lift vehicle, but you do realise Starship is being built to replace Falcon 9?! They will launch starlink v2 from Starship, along with any other commercial payload; the ambition to get to Mars is just marketing that makes the headlines. 

I can't see the logic that building a cheaper way to get to space is a pointless exercise.

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8 minutes ago, SamAndrew said:

Agreed they are different in the sense that starlink is a satellite constelation, and this is a heavy lift vehicle, but you do realise Starship is being built to replace Falcon 9?! They will launch starlink v2 from Starship, along with any other commercial payload; the ambition to get to Mars is just marketing that makes the headlines. 

I can't see the logic that building a cheaper way to get to space is a pointless exercise.

We will have to agree to disagree….And end it there…👍🏻

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24 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Why, starlink is a completely different project to this latest epic fail, i said that starlink was at least giving people access to things they would not have otherwise, and that this latest attempt was a complete waste of money, where is the contradiction….??

Be careful of you may fall for the lazy media headlines which conflate rocket blows up with fail.  Let's be honest, the complexity of engineering involved in such machines as being developed by the SpaceX programme is beyond the comprehension of the majority of the public. Unless you have a background as a professional engineer in the aerospace industry you will have little understanding of the difficulties to be overcome nor how trial programme development milestones are measured.  I have no inside knowledge but the rocket yesterday certainly comprised tens of thousands of individual components,  multiple systems and miles of computer code.    The rocket was a bespoke design, it wasn't produced on a mass production line, it hasn't undergone extensive field trials and early failure proving; its operating procedures will have been written with nothing other than the benefit of  an engineer's best professional judgement. not informed by an extensive service /flight history. 

The launch event certainly had a goal;  in fact it would have had several goals, all with detailed metrics against which telemetry data would provide indication of performance.  These metrics would have been set against every mission and flight critical component and system; performance criteria defined as  success or fail against declared values would have started in the hours preceding engine ignition and lift off.  Thousands of  measurements of success or fail would have been made right up until the rocket received the command to detonate - that command action itself being a metric which was tested and as we know was successful. 

So when the media talk about "a fail" exactly which of the many program lines of development and metrics are they referring to?  Perhaps these are the self same critics that would have labelled the development of the Covid vaccination development a fail against each of the stages that eventually brought us the vaccine.   J F Kenedy said "we do these things because they are hard"  - I suspect he must have known something about engineering, only those who do not would glibly report  yesterday's launch as a failure.  

Jim 

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2 hours ago, SamAndrew said:

There's no intention to recover any of the wreckage.

How do you know that? Again telemetry cannot inform anything on the failure mode of martial properties or the nature of stress failures.  As before I'll defer to the engineers employed by Space X doing their work. 

Jim 

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An "epic fail" would have been a RUD on the launch mount or a low air-burst which would have destroyed the whole launch complex. The fact that it didn't has to be considered a success.

And notice that B7 S24 stayed intact through all the twists and turns that they went through. I suspect that an aluminium rocket would have come apart at the seams.

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I wouldn't pay much attention to media output. Its always chopped and changed to suit "their" or "their controlling interest's" narrative. The rocket lifted regardless of anything else, that's an achievement in itself. Was it worth it, remains to be seen. Progress isn't made by inaction.

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48 minutes ago, saac said:

How do you know that? Again telemetry cannot inform anything on the failure mode of martial properties or the nature of stress failures.  As before I'll defer to the engineers employed by Space X doing their work. 

Jim 

https://www.faa.gov/media/27236

There is an environmental assessment, spacex were only planning to recover or sink debris that did not sink naturally, they were even planning to resort to firearms in the event the booster didn't sink.

Spending millions surveying and recovering debris from the sea floor at this stage in development is not their philosophy.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/07/20/support-strut-probable-cause-of-falcon-9-failure/#:~:text=A faulty support strut inside,chief Elon Musk said Monday.

See the above story for how they figured out the failure in a Falcon 9 using telemetry to work out what had failed, and then ground testing on the same parts to confirm the parts weren't made to tollerance.

"Musk said SpaceX engineers analyzing extensive telemetry data from the rocket, along with physical testing on the ground, concluded a support strut holding one of the helium tanks likely fractured near a bolt attach point."

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48 minutes ago, DaveS said:

An "epic fail" would have been a RUD on the launch mount or a low air-burst which would have destroyed the whole launch complex. The fact that it didn't has to be considered a success.

And notice that B7 S24 stayed intact through all the twists and turns that they went through. I suspect that an aluminium rocket would have come apart at the seams.

I was impressed that stayed together through it's fairly intense spiralling. I've seen other rockets disintegrate from a slight deviation. Starship seems incredibly strong despite its huge bulk.

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1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:

We will have to agree to disagree….And end it there…👍🏻

To clarify, my position is that endeavouring to reduce the cost of getting things to orbit using a fully reuseable rocket is a worthwile effort.

And you disagree, but provide no reasoning.

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3 hours ago, SamAndrew said:

https://www.faa.gov/media/27236

There is an environmental assessment, spacex were only planning to recover or sink debris that did not sink naturally, they were even planning to resort to firearms in the event the booster didn't sink.

Spending millions surveying and recovering debris from the sea floor at this stage in development is not their philosophy.

https://spaceflightnow.com/2015/07/20/support-strut-probable-cause-of-falcon-9-failure/#:~:text=A faulty support strut inside,chief Elon Musk said Monday.

See the above story for how they figured out the failure in a Falcon 9 using telemetry to work out what had failed, and then ground testing on the same parts to confirm the parts weren't made to tollerance.

"Musk said SpaceX engineers analyzing extensive telemetry data from the rocket, along with physical testing on the ground, concluded a support strut holding one of the helium tanks likely fractured near a bolt attach point."

For sure acoustic vibration analysis is used throughout aviation to predict failure modes of rotating components such as turbine, compressor discs and blades, gearboxes etc.  The point you are missing is that without physically examining the component that failed due to say a stress failure, there is no way of knowing the failure mode.  Strain gauges could be used to provide telemetered data and these may be in use in a number of critical components.  If they are making no attempt to recover any of the wreckage for examination then they are doing so because of financial. practical or engineering reasons- they may well be confident that they have sufficient data through telemetry but it will not give the complete picture.  Case in point concerns the quote regarding the support strut - it is suspected of failure but the mode of failure will remain unknown.  They will certainly perform load testing and material examination of other similarly specified struts. 

Jim 

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40 minutes ago, Ags said:

I was impressed that stayed together through it's fairly intense spiralling. I've seen other rockets disintegrate from a slight deviation. Starship seems incredibly strong despite its huge bulk.

Yes that was pretty notable and should support their growing confidence of the structural integrity of Starship - that will certainly be catalogued as a success.

Jim 

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1 hour ago, Ags said:

I was impressed that stayed together through it's fairly intense spiralling

Yes that was my main takeaway from this test flight. I was surprised that the Range Safety Officer (if indeed spacex have that role) let it tumble for so long but, in the cold light of day, its seems reasonable that they'd keep the thing going as long as possible. More time to learn more things!

My naughty side imagines a couple of flight controllers fighting over the joy stick 🤣

I do wonder if there was a failure to separate? The commentator called separation but it never happened. If it had separated then the spaceship thingy  would have been on its way, though not once the tumbling started.

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1 hour ago, saac said:

For sure acoustic frequency analysis is used throughout aviation to predict failure modes of rotating components such as turbine, compressor discs and blades, gearboxes etc.  The point you are missing is that without physically examining the component that failed due to say a stress failure, there is no way of knowing the failure mode.  Strain gauges could be used to provide telemetered data and these may be in use in a number of critical components.  If they are making no attempt to recover any of the wreckage for examination then they are doing so because of financial. practical or engineering reasons- they may well be confident that they have sufficient data through telemetry but it will not give the complete picture.  Case in point concerns the quote regarding the support strut - it is suspected of failure but the mode of failure will remain unknown.  They will certainly perform load testing and material examination of other similarly specified struts. 

Jim 

I'd disagree and say you can work out how something failed if you have the right telemetry, and while recovery and analysis of the debris would certainly be of value, it's not worth the effort for the reasons you state. 

The approach here is to iterate quickly, and fail fast; the rocket was obsolete before it took of, so they could go to a whole load of effort, only to find the failure is in a part that has already been redesigned or replaced.

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13 minutes ago, Astronomist said:

As I understood from the commentary the starship was supposed to separate some time prior to the start of the  tumbling, but failed to do so. presumably the staging mechanism had a problem or something.

I think for what ever reason they had lost control, either the thrust vectoring wasn't working correctly, too many of the controllable engines had failed, an imbalance in the outer ring of engines due to imbalance in the failures, but in order to attempt separation the booster had to cut the main engines which never happened, so I don't think separation was even attempted.

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1 hour ago, SamAndrew said:

I'd disagree and say you can work out how something failed if you have the right telemetry, and while recovery and analysis of the debris would certainly be of value, it's not worth the effort for the reasons you state. 

The approach here is to iterate quickly, and fail fast; the rocket was obsolete before it took of, so they could go to a whole load of effort, only to find the failure is in a part that has already been redesigned or replaced.

Then we will certainly disagree.

There is no doubt on what SpaceX design philosophy is, see my previous comment

Jim 

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1 hour ago, Astronomist said:

As I understood from the commentary the starship was supposed to separate some time prior to the start of the  tumbling, but failed to do so. presumably the staging mechanism had a problem or something.

It could suggest that there was the possibility of more than one failure. Examination of wreckage would be useful here. 

Jim 

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From my experience, nothing beats examining a failed object in person (if it's literally obliterated then of course no but it may still be able to be tested for something) and seeing its fit and function application. Even metallurgical analysis and reports of failed components from "experts" can be wrong. I've also seen countless "engineer" drawings with impractical tolerances and testing requirements on them for the product without an ounce of an idea of how it would be made. Only when everyone is on the same wavelength and understanding do things go smoothly.

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13 minutes ago, Elp said:

From my experience, nothing beats examining a failed object in person

Well they can certainly examine this in person! Huge amount of damage to the launch pad (table?) that will need to be rebuilt with a flame pit/channel I bet. Not sure why made them think they didn’t need one.

1B9E09AC-1F0D-4F66-9F35-66EAB5C72454.jpeg

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