Space - The Final Frontier

[Christine]

Could be exiting:


Orbital Test Flight

Launch Time
Mon Apr 10, 2023 14:55 GMT+2

First full-stack launch of Starship and Super Heavy. First Starship launch to attempt to reach orbit.




https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6754

 

[Free To Canoe]

Big rocket. Should be quite a show for South Texas.

 

[Chuckanut]

Big rocket. Should be quite a show for South Texas.

I remember Musk's comment when SpaceX first launched Falcon Heavy. It was something to the effect that he would be happy if it cleared the launch pad by enough to not destroy the pad when the rocket blew up. The launch was a huge success and put the first Tesla into solar orbit.

I suspect Starship will be much more risky.

 

[CaptTom]

Fingers crossed! I must say I'm getting worried though. SpaceX has been so successful that I wonder if they're getting over-confident. Remember Challenger? Musk's increasingly erratic behavior in public also has me second-guessing whether he's the genius we've all assumed him to be.

Hopefully the SpaceX team has the collective skill and wisdom to pull this off, and make it look easy. I just can't shake this feeling. Space is like any force of nature, fickle and unforgiving.

 

[Chuckanut]

Fingers crossed! I must say I'm getting worried though. SpaceX has been so successful that I wonder if they're getting over-confident. Remember Challenger? Musk's increasingly erratic behavior in public also has me second-guessing whether he's the genius we've all assumed him to be.

Hopefully the SpaceX team has the collective skill and wisdom to pull this off, and make it look easy. I just can't shake this feeling. Space is like any force of nature, fickle and unforgiving.

Thankfully, he still has Gwenn Shotwell running the day to day operations of SpaceX. She's the COO, IIRC. What her involvement is with Starship, I don't know. Mr. Musk estimates a 50% chance of failure on the upcoming launch. But, that's his way doing things - build, test, fail, fix problems, then repeat. Remember how many times the Falcon 9 boosters crash landed while trying to land? The confligrations made for great videos on Youtube. [emoji4]

 

[Chuckanut]

SpaceX got the launch license from the FAA.

Starship launch could be as early as April 17.

 

[CaptTom]

...Remember how many times the Falcon 9 boosters crash landed while trying to land?...

Yeah, but didn't I read that at one point they were one failure away from bankruptcy? I have no idea where Musk is financially at this point, but I know that if Starship doesn't work out it dashes a lot of hopes for space exploration in the US. Fingers crossed!!

I'm very glad other options are in development, albeit much slower and more costly.

I was a huge SpaceX fan boy until recently. But I got to thinking about putting all our eggs in that one basket. Even Starlink, which I almost joined the beta testing for, is looking less reliable as the Chinese and Russians become more aggressive. It's possible that a satellite constellation is more vulnerable than we thought.

 

[Christine]

Mr. Musk estimates a 50% chance of failure on the upcoming launch. But, that's his way doing things - build, test, fail, fix problems, then repeat. Remember how many times the Falcon 9 boosters crash landed while trying to land?

This is not the first Starship flight though. They had their rounds of crash landings before they finally stuck the landing.

 

[audreyh1]

We happen to be on South Padre Island at the moment (migrating birds). Saw the huge rocket at the launch tower driving over the causeway today. Gonna try to see whatever happens tomorrow.

We did notice a lot of Teslas here, ha ha.

This is not the first Starship flight though. They had their rounds of crash landings before they finally stuck the landing.

It’s the first orbital test though, with the starship landing in the Pacific Ocean north of Kauai. Pretty exciting!

 

[aja8888]

We happen to be on South Padre Island at the moment (migrating birds). Saw the huge rocket at the launch tower driving over the causeway today. Gonna try to see whatever happens tomorrow.

We did notice a lot of Teslas here, ha ha.

Migrating Teslas? (LOL)

 

[audreyh1]

Oh, well! Still was very cool to go.

Unbelievable number of people and cars. We barely got into the park even though we left the nearby hotel at 6:15am. We were in a great spot.

 

[Chuckanut]

We happen to be on South Padre Island at the moment (migrating birds). Saw the huge rocket at the launch tower driving over the causeway today. Gonna try to see whatever happens tomorrow.

We did notice a lot of Teslas here, ha ha.


It’s the first orbital test though, with the starship landing in the Pacific Ocean north of Kauai. Pretty exciting!

I’m not sure it’s even one orbit. More like up, and then coast down. I could be wrong.

 

[Chuckanut]

Not a bad first test flight for Starship. SpaceX has its work to do over the next few months.

 

[Gumby]

Well, that was exciting.

Launch occurs at 45 minutes.

 

[Chuckanut]

It looked like they lost 3 or 4 engines in the first stage booster while accelerating. That’s another issue to address. Why the second stage didn’t separate is a mystery.

Given the long string of successful Falcon launches we’ve gotten used to success from SpaceX.

I wonder……. Did the rocket blow up on its own or did launch control order its destruction?

The engineers will be burning the midnight oil for a few months.

 

[Aerides]

I wonder……. Did the rocket blow up on its own or did launch control order its destruction?

SpaceX is calling it a "rapid unscheduled disassembly", which, and I'm no scientist, I think means... "Oh Shhhhh it blew up"

 

[CaptTom]

I counted five engines out for most of the ascent. Three right from the start.

Looked to me like attitude control was the issue. The first stage engines kept firing past when stage separation was expected. Possibly trying to get the thing pointed in the right direction for separation. Clearly that never happened. My guess would be the abort was triggered based on that. But of course that's only a guess, since they haven't released any details yet.

Largest rocket ever launched, plus a satisfying explosion. What's not to like?

 

[audreyh1]

Woo hoo! A nice liftoff and 4 minutes of flight. We could see all of it through bins including the explosion. For a while we could see right up into the booster and see the lit engines before it headed east to the gulf.

It was extremely loud - the engines after liftoff that is. Lots of popping and sort of sounded like some misfiring. Even triggered our car (silent) alarm. The explosion was far more muted and distant.

Well, that was exciting.

It sure was!

 

[Kork13]

Given the long string of successful Falcon launches we’ve gotten used to success from SpaceX.

I wonder……. Did the rocket blow up on its own or did launch control order its destruction?

The engineers will be burning the midnight oil for a few months.

The launch plan was for it to circle the earth & crash into the ocean somewhere near Hawaii. But with the failure to separate (and depending on exactly what caused it), either spontaneous or commanded detonation are both entirely possible.... though details of failures often get close-held for PR reasons, so we may never know.

And keep in mind that this is the first fully-integrated test launch of this Starlifter rocket, and they're on the Falcon 9 .... they dealt with A LOT of failures as they were developing all of the previous variants, with many, many explosions both in the air & on the ground. The early US space program (Pioneer & others) faced the same issues ... extra-orbital/inter-planetary rockets are dramatically more complex than orbital or sub-orbital rockets (which in themselves are wildly complex). It's simply the way it goes, and I guarantee that this Starlifter launch will still be called a significant success.

Shoot, SpaceX even blew up MY (technically my university's) small-sat out at Kwajalein on a Falcon 1 back in 2006 -- rocket exploded on the pad at T+33 sec, our satellite bounced along the ground & landed next to our shipping crate, so they decided to send the wreckage back to us . Its beat-up remains now sit enshrined as a museum piece in the university's space lab.

 

[REWahoo]

I watched the launch on the SpaceX YouTube channel, then after the RUD, switched over to The Everyday Astronaut's YouTube channel. He was streaming the launch from the balcony of an apartment 5 miles from the launch site. Roughly 8-10 minutes after the launch it began raining sand on the balcony, forcing him back inside. Evidently the force of the launch threw up tons of sand which drifted for miles and coated everything in its path.

 

[audreyh1]

I watched the launch on the SpaceX YouTube channel, then after the RUD, switched over to The Everyday Astronaut's YouTube channel. He was streaming the launch from the balcony of an apartment 5 miles from the launch site. Roughly 8-10 minutes after the launch it began raining sand on the balcony, forcing him back inside. Evidently the force of the launch threw up tons of sand which drifted for miles and coated everything in its path.

We were 5 miles away too - south end of South Padre so he must have been in the buildings far behind us. Fortunately we didn’t experience any raining sand. We were already headed back to the car to check on the alarm message (which we decided must have been the extremely loud engine sounds), and may have been in the car waiting to exit the park.

We know that SpaceX here is a research and test facility, so only test flights here, no commercial launches. So it’s always chancy.

 

[joesxm3]

My friends own one of three houses in Boca Chica that refused to sell out to SpaceX. They hate Elon. I don't dare ask them how they liked the launch.

 

[Major Tom]

SpaceX is calling it a "rapid unscheduled disassembly", which, and I'm no scientist, I think means... "Oh Shhhhh it blew up"

Is "rapid unscheduled disassembly" something like "conscious uncoupling"?

I enjoy following the progress of SpaceX. Full success will surely follow in time.

 

[f35phixer]

This is flight test, I've gone through many failures that we gather data from, learn and make better.....

I'm sure they have miles and miles of orange wire on these craft, that sending back data to analyzes ...

 

[dixonge]

It looked like they lost 3 or 4 engines in the first stage booster while accelerating. That’s another issue to address. Why the second stage didn’t separate is a mystery.

Given the long string of successful Falcon launches we’ve gotten used to success from SpaceX.

I wonder……. Did the rocket blow up on its own or did launch control order its destruction?

The engineers will be burning the midnight oil for a few months.

There was debris at the launch pad, some lofted as high as 2/3 the height of the Starship. So bad things happened beneath the fire and undoubtedly loosened some engines as well, as not all of them made it into the air. Definitely exciting!