Some postmortem on the "successful" launch: Things that were a success: it flew. it turns out when you put enough rocket engines and fuel behind something, it will move. who knew. it got most of the way through first stage flight. that's kinda nifty considering that stage design had never flown before. Things that were not a success: (i was trying to get the read more thing to work but couldn't) within moments of lifting off, several engines had been knocked out by the shockwave of the rocket's exhaust reverberating off the flat ground below. more would fail for assorted and less obvious reasons throughout the flight, but the ones that failed before tower clear have a fairly apparent cause. it started tumbling at the end of first stage flight the two stages did not separate the rocket excavated a crater beneath the launch mount due to a lack of any flame trench/flame diverter/sound suppression system (this is why several engines were knocked out) as it excavated said crater, it sent chunks of concrete flying half a mile and one completely totaled a minivan that was being used to host a news outlet's cameras remotely. (Nobody was harmed, this vehicle was in the keep out zone and just being used to stage remote cameras, but still) dust kicked up from the rocket excavating said crater rained down all over the protected wetlands upon which the SpaceX launch site sits, the dust falling at least as far as nearby Port Isabel and South Padre Island. they may not have blown up their facilities, but they sure did manage to wreck them plenty serious nonetheless as you can see from the onboard camera view in the previous post, not all of the thermal tiles that are meant to keep the thing from melting during reentry stayed on. this is generally bad it blew up. this one was kinda expected at some point i don't think anyone sane expected any measure of success from the b*stard battleship but even still it manages to find ways to defy our expectations and fail in strange ways. It's worth noting that at the moment, this vehicle is the recipient of a sole-source contract to be our lunar lander. This is the basket we chose to put our eggs in, despite being fully aware of spacex's history of underbidding to get government contracts. I hope the other contenders have been working on their bids still, because we were going to offer the option to bid on future landings to them. https://cohost.org/lupi/post/1366931-alright-why-the-**** https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/spacex-starship-explosion-spread-particulate-matter-for-miles.html And the FAA has grounded SpaceX for the time being.
Bizarre this test launch was approved for Boca -- awesome they pulled it off but so sketchy. I'm wondering what would have happened if it just blew up on the pad... Boca isn't that remote.
That was bas ass........how the one part came back and landed perfectly back on the pad was over the top, it was like a dam video game
As someone who works in the Aerospace Sector (NASA), I am so damn happy about this and to be a part of all of this progress. I understand people disliking Elon's politics, but he has done more for the Space Industry than anyone since Kennedy himself. He has helped pull NASA from the ashes (surely I'll get flamed for this because of the hate for Elon on this board). The old hat NASA guys adore him because space exploration had become a redheaded stepchild for society, and the nerds at SpaceX, Axiom, Blue Origin, etc made it cool to dream again. There is alot of stuff we will be seeing in our lifetime that we SHOULD have already seen during the 60's 70's, 80's and 90's.
I find it really awesome that even if the rocket explodes, the crew has a very high chance of survival.
I certainly don’t like the turn that Musk has taken politically and think he’s acting of being full of himself and grievance over CA regulations. I still admire for busking up Tesla and Space X. People can be complicated and I still think his overall vision for the space travel and eventually making humanity a solar system wide species is admirable.
Go for launch. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and we see another launch this year or very early next year.
The pad seems mostly intact. This was one of my biggest concerns. Also there were no engine failures so that is a huge win. I was disappointed the RUD on the booster was activated so quickly after separation. Its likely there is still significant amount of work to land it. It looks like Starship trajectory was off significantly very early on. Hopefully a third attempt happens in the next couple months.
