Starship Launch

[luke3]

I don't know guys, maybe it's the fact that my personal experiences have me expect a certain image from the aerospace industry, maybe it's because i get labeled as a NASA apoligist at times, or maybe it's because I just got up at 4 AM, but there's something just not right about this whole ordeal.

It goes back to the definition of professionalism that we all abide by with our look and demeanor whenever we go to work flying the general public around. And our employers also put a lot of effort in maintaining this look. Then we have a thing that looks like it's more at home in an episode of Duck Dodgers than at Kennedy Space Center, kind of hobbled together and with some obvious engineering challenges. And the whole snarkiness about "unscheduled rapid disassembly" or the Falcon 9 explosion compilations set to circus music. Plus I have some personal reasons from my engineering days to believe the safety culture there isn't yet where it needs to be, but that's a story for another day.

There's no doubt the engineers that work at SpaceX are very smart people, and eventually the Falcon 9 worked out to be a solid, reliable launcher at a very competitive price point, also IMO thanks to the regulatory and engineering oversight of "big bad NASA" to ensure it fulfilled the contract requirements. But this whole meme lord approach to engineering, as someone that's had a loved one sit at the pointy end of a launch vehicle, just rubs me the wrong way. I would expect more professionalism from a company trying to become the new gold standard for space exploration, otherwise it just looks like another stunt to sell more Teslas.

Rant over, I'm normally not uptight about stuff but there's a line and I feel we've gone too far across. I'll go "lighten up" now

 

[killbilly]

I don't know guys, maybe it's the fact that my personal experiences have me expect a certain image from the aerospace industry, maybe it's because i get labeled as a NASA apoligist at times, or maybe it's because I just got up at 4 AM, but there's something just not right about this whole ordeal.

It goes back to the definition of professionalism that we all abide by with our look and demeanor whenever we go to work flying the general public around. And our employers also put a lot of effort in maintaining this look. Then we have a thing that looks like it's more at home in an episode of Duck Dodgers than at Kennedy Space Center, kind of hobbled together and with some obvious engineering challenges. And the whole snarkiness about "unscheduled rapid disassembly" or the Falcon 9 explosion compilations set to circus music. Plus I have some personal reasons from my engineering days to believe the safety culture there isn't yet where it needs to be, but that's a story for another day.

There's no doubt the engineers that work at SpaceX are very smart people, and eventually the Falcon 9 worked out to be a solid, reliable launcher at a very competitive price point, also IMO thanks to the regulatory and engineering oversight of "big bad NASA" to ensure it fulfilled the contract requirements. But this whole meme lord approach to engineering, as someone that's had a loved one sit at the pointy end of a launch vehicle, just rubs me the wrong way. I would expect more professionalism from a company trying to become the new gold standard for space exploration, otherwise it just looks like another stunt to sell more Teslas.

Rant over, I'm normally not uptight about stuff but there's a line and I feel we've gone too far across. I'll go "lighten up" now

Thoughtful post. Thanks for writing it.

I believe it's natural to compare SpaceX and NASA through lenses of culture and engineering. One ostensibly begat the other. But because of this, it's also important to remember the most key issue: SpaceX isn't trying to be NASA. NASA is already NASA and I don't think the company was founded to do things the same way. We can look at SpaceX against a model of NASA and draw contrasts but I'm not sure it makes sense to condemn them for failing to meet a....cultural standard, I guess...that they aren't obligated to nor desire to be. I may not be fully understanding your argument but I think that's at least part of what you're saying.

Short point: I don't think they're shooting for "gold standard." I think they're shooting for "reliably profitable and economical launch service." Those two things probably dovetail in some places and diverge in others.

I'm quite curious to hear your thoughts relative to the engineering and safety side.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

You’re a perma-doofus who thinks that getting billions in government contracts is totally unrelated to SpaceX’s ability to launch expensive, low probability of success rocket tests.

He is a doofus, I’ll give you that, but if you think there’s no difference between a government contract and government funding, then you are also.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

The Elon haters can whine as much as you want, but the simple fact of the matter is that NASA in the post-Apollo age has essentially been a failure and SpaceX has been a massive success. While I would have loved for NASA to be the one to bring us to a Star Trek like future, the sad reality is that it didn’t and won’t work, and our best hopes of reaching further out into space rest on capitalism.

 

[bike21]

The Elon haters can whine as much as you want, but the simple fact of the matter is that NASA in the post-Apollo age has essentially been a failure and SpaceX has been a massive success. While I would have loved for NASA to be the one to bring us to a Star Trek like future, the sad reality is that it didn’t and won’t work, and our best hopes of reaching further out into space rest on capitalism.

Por que no los dos? Webb, Perseverance, Mars Helicopter, Hubble 2.0, Comet Deflector Thingy, TESS, Atermis, just off the top of the head would say otherwise on the failure statement.

 

[Baronman]

The Elon haters can whine as much as you want, but the simple fact of the matter is that NASA in the post-Apollo age has essentially been a failure and SpaceX has been a massive success. While I would have loved for NASA to be the one to bring us to a Star Trek like future, the sad reality is that it didn’t and won’t work, and our best hopes of reaching further out into space rest on capitalism.

As someone said earlier, “ he’s problematic.” As in get the f in-line.

 

[SlumTodd_Millionaire]

As someone said earlier, “ he’s problematic.” As in get the f in-line.

The word “problematic” is the most overused and useless word that the woke fringe has embraced.

 

[DropTank]

I don't know guys, maybe it's the fact that my personal experiences have me expect a certain image from the aerospace industry, maybe it's because i get labeled as a NASA apoligist at times, or maybe it's because I just got up at 4 AM, but there's something just not right about this whole ordeal.

It goes back to the definition of professionalism that we all abide by with our look and demeanor whenever we go to work flying the general public around. And our employers also put a lot of effort in maintaining this look. Then we have a thing that looks like it's more at home in an episode of Duck Dodgers than at Kennedy Space Center, kind of hobbled together and with some obvious engineering challenges. And the whole snarkiness about "unscheduled rapid disassembly" or the Falcon 9 explosion compilations set to circus music. Plus I have some personal reasons from my engineering days to believe the safety culture there isn't yet where it needs to be, but that's a story for another day.

There's no doubt the engineers that work at SpaceX are very smart people, and eventually the Falcon 9 worked out to be a solid, reliable launcher at a very competitive price point, also IMO thanks to the regulatory and engineering oversight of "big bad NASA" to ensure it fulfilled the contract requirements. But this whole meme lord approach to engineering, as someone that's had a loved one sit at the pointy end of a launch vehicle, just rubs me the wrong way. I would expect more professionalism from a company trying to become the new gold standard for space exploration, otherwise it just looks like another stunt to sell more Teslas.

Rant over, I'm normally not uptight about stuff but there's a line and I feel we've gone too far across. I'll go "lighten up" now

You're old school and new things scare you.

I'll just gesture to the SLS and laugh about "hobbled together"

 

[MikeD]

The old school. The engine and exhaust end of the Rocketdyne F-1 rocket engine, 5 of which were on the first stage of a Saturn V rocket that launched Apollo space missions. Each of these 5 engines on liftoff, used 8000 lbs of fuel a second to generate 1.5 million lbs of thrust, or 32,200,000 horsepower. For a full Saturn V rocket, that meant it was burning 40,000lbs of fuel per second to generate 7.5 million pounds of thrust, or 176,000,000 horsepower.

Some cool engineering there.

 

[MikeD]

The Crawler land transport vehicle, which would transport a complete Apollo rocket and launch pad from the vehicle assembly area, to the launch pads located 3.5 miles away. The crawler carried the full rocket assembly, which weighed more than 18,000,000 lbs, and it transported it at 1 mph. Taking up to 16 hours to travel 3.5 miles. The crawler itself weighed 6,000,000 lbs empty, was powered by two 2750 horsepower diesel engines, and had a fuel economy of 47 feet per gallon of diesel fuel, or 1/150th miles per gallon. Two were built, and exist today.

 

[inigo88]

SpaceX’s safety culture (edit: on Starship, Falcon 9 is pretty mature) reminds me a lot of the US Military and Convair’s development of the Atlas rocket prior to John Glenn’s orbital flight on Mercury-Atlas in 1962.

Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom rode on the Redstone, a comparably safe but suborbital only rocket, which did nothing to catch up with the Russians who had already beat us to space with Sputnik and orbited Yuri Gagarin. To catch up with the Russians and reach orbit, John Glenn would have to ride a rocket that was a converted ICBM which at the time only had a 50% success rate (which in its original role was good enough because you could just launch more of them).

Source:

Atlas, NASA's First Rocket in Orbit, Really Liked to Explode

A look at the Atlas' explosive history.

www.vice.com

The Atlas was conceived in 1951 as part of a US Air Force program to study ballistic missiles. Announced in 1954, the Atlas became a top priority project in 1955 after intelligence reports that the Soviet Union was building intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) reached the US.

Testing the Atlas began with just booster launches in 1957. On June 11, the first launch attempt at Cape Canaveral in Florida ended in disaster. The rocket exploded after launch at an altitude of just 10,000 feet. The second test that September didn't end any better. The rocket exploded and was destroyed. The third test in December was the first success – a 600 mile suborbital flight.

Testing of the full rocket began in July 1958. The first launch was labeled "marginally successful." It was out of control during its flight, but at least all the system had worked and the test hadn't ended in an explosion.

Propulsion failures dogged the next few tests, but it was clear that the Atlas was the only vehicle capable of launching a heavy payload, such as a manned spacecraft, into orbit. NASA knew that. Established on October 1, 1958, the space agency wasted no time in procuring Atlases from the US Army for its Mercury program.

With manned orbital launches in its future, NASA tests of the Atlas joined the military launches for a formidable launch schedule in 1959. There were a number of successes, all suborbital, but there were an equal number of failures. Propellant feed failures, propulsions failures, electrical failures, hydraulic systems failures, and launch systems failures dogged Atlas tests throughout the year.

Within those failures was Big Joe, the first Atlas to fly as part of the Mercury program. Launched on September 9, 1959, it carried a boilerplate Mercury capsule with the goal of testing the capsule's heat shield. Fifty-eight seconds after launch, the vehicle exploded. It traveled a whopping 6 miles in that time. The cause was a structural failure.

There’s a really great montage in the movie “The Right Stuff” that shows a lot of real Atlas development footage and the Mercury astronauts going to witness test flights, watching the rocket explode and leaving unnerved.

So I get what SpaceX is trying to do with the rapid development pace and they’re willing to lose vehicles to do it, and I respect that - it’s Elon’s money after all. But I also get where Luke is coming from. SpaceX has the benefit of six decades of launch vehicle development lessons learned - if they do their engineering due diligence ideally they shouldn’t be re-making the 1962 mistakes (because NASA already did that, documented it extensively and warned us about what not to do), if they’re going to lose a vehicle it should be over brand new ones.

From where I’m standing SpaceX has the launch vehicle design part pretty well dialed but they consistently get foiled by the boring less sexy stuff. Ground Support Equipment (GSE) seems to be a recurring theme, including the on pad explosion of a Falcon 9 in 2016 (Picking up the Pieces – SpaceX begins Investigation into Falcon 9 On-Pad Explosion – Spaceflight101). In the latest Superheavy Starship launch there’s talk that there were boulder sized chunks of concrete flying hundreds of feet in the air back into the booster which may have led to so many raptors being lost. Maybe they should have spent a bit more time on or dedicated more resources to designing a flame trench that wouldn’t do that? It’s not a sexy engineering job but it’s super important and something NASA was able to successfully do 6 decades ago (though I’ll give them credit that twice the thrust of a Saturn V must be a really difficult challenge). At the end of the day this is engineering and you have a schedule with a deadline and a finite budget and you need to decide where to allocate your resources over the course of the project. While it makes the most sense to spend it on the rocket you’ve got to not forget about the other mundane stuff like GSE and launch pad infrastructure so you don’t accidentally damage or blow up the rocket you just spent all that time on before it leaves the pad.

Long story short I’m with Luke on this one. SpaceX is awesome and I was stoked to see the launch and I hope they learned a lot from the failure. But like it or not each failure leads to an erosion of credibility, so you want to have humility in the face of failure and make them count. Elon meme-lording on social media and the commentators joking about RUDs and “wasn’t that still exciting!” is mostly PR spin but it does leave me feeling a bit uneasy too, especially if the failure wasn’t a novel one but actually a repeat of something we should have known better about from 70 years ago. They’re definitely still in the 1950s Atlas rocket stage but hopefully not making the same 1950s Atlas rocket mistakes. I guess knowing that vehicle will eventually carry people there’s a professional reassurance when the reaction is met with humility in “we will learn as much as we can from this failure and do better next time” vs “wooo wasn’t that awesome? Merica!” Still, watching a rocket twice as powerful as the Saturn V leave the pad was fantastic.

 

[pwttogfk]

That about sums my thoughts up. I’m amazed by both how successful the Falcon 9 is and how they still seem to be reinventing the wheel. NASA also had brain drain in the post-Apollo and post-STS drawdowns and went significantly backwards with SLS but seriously if the pad falling apart blew up engines and doomed the launch I’m gonna facepalm. There’s a difference between iterative development and going full send without being ready.

 

[Boris Badenov]

Still, watching a rocket twice as powerful as the Saturn V leave the pad was fantastic.

This is a great post. And I don't disagree that someone pretty obviously dropped the ball w/r/t GSE/flame-trench/possibly lack of water-deluge, etc. etc. etc. My complaint is more with the notion that this is somehow evidence that Space X just sucks and it's a bunch of bros who don't really know what they're doing just lobbing rockets in to the sky, crossing their fingers, and hoping for the best. And the reality remains that when you "move fast and break things", there's a significantly higher probability that you're going to miss something here and there which would be fairly obvious if you'd spent 50 years designing, re-designing, scrapping, designing, re-designing, scrap...nevermind we think this will work with some fixes, etc. And the economics speak for themselves, if they can get this thing working, which I'm still extremely confident that they will.

That said, it *is* infuriating if (as seems likely from where I sit) they lost this thing because while all of the big brains were concentrating on all the whiz-bang, some general contractor was hired to just pour a big concrete slab to stick the thing on (I exaggerate, I acknowledge), particularly given, as you point out, that there are no doubt reams of data from NASA engineering regarding what is necessary to launch an enormous rocket without it fragging itself.

Of course that raises the specter of NASA sort of maybe slightly hoping that the thing WILL fail, and while certainly not withholding data or anything like that, possibly wiring their jaws shut and looking at each other with wide eyes and comical expressions when they see the GSE/launch pad/whatever. I don't think that's likely to be the case, but you can't help but wonder. Like no one from NASA said "hey guys, when you launch the really big ones, there's stuff you need to do that isn't necessary with a Falcon (or a Redstone, or even an Atlas)"?

Who knows, that's all well outside my area of knowledge. What I do know is that the thing basically worked. Or *almost* worked. Or whatever. And, when it does work (if it does), it will be a sea-change in what's possible due to the boring, unsexy, but absolutely crucial economics involved. As you well know, we're talking about *multiple* orders of magnitude of improvement in the cost to launch stuff in to space. The importance of that almost cannot be overstated.

Edit: Also your reference to The Right Stuff makes your post not only incisive, thoughtful, and deeply intelligent, but also Awesome. WE WANT A WINDOW.

 

[USMCmech]

 

[Minuteman]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1649430006521626625

View: https://twitter.com/SpacecoastPix/status/1649430006521626625

 

[Salkadi]

Looks like it started the job on making its own flame trench

 

[Minuteman]

The Crawler land transport vehicle, which would transport a complete Apollo rocket and launch pad from the vehicle assembly area, to the launch pads located 3.5 miles away. The crawler carried the full rocket assembly, which weighed more than 18,000,000 lbs, and it transported it at 1 mph. Taking up to 16 hours to travel 3.5 miles. The crawler itself weighed 6,000,000 lbs empty, was powered by two 2750 horsepower diesel engines, and had a fuel economy of 47 feet per gallon of diesel fuel, or 1/150th miles per gallon. Two were built, and exist today.


View attachment 71206

Fun fact: the crawler moves on a roadway made of river rocks. It crushes them and road must be periodically rebuilt with new material every few years.

Apparently crushed rock fines mimic the appearance of lunar regolith at the wavelengths of the sensors used by the computer that would select a safe landing site for future missions to the moon. So they used the rocks crushed by the crawler to build a "swamp lab" for testing a few years back of many different projects with the Morpheus lander.

One thing I learned about this as a result of the SpaceX experience is that landing on the surface of the Earth (in an atmosphere), the plume and blast dissipation behave very differenly than in the vacuum on the surface of the moon. The atmosphere offers resistance and the rocket plume will be focused and tunnel down in a feedback loop (it just scatters in a vacuum; this is also related to Mach diamonds kind-of). Their solution on Earth was to bury concrete pads just below a thin layer of the crushed rock at the two places they expected the lander to select to prevent drilling and destroying the labratory.

View: https://youtu.be/ftPZsKeAZTY

 

[DropTank]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1649425500526329863

View: https://twitter.com/unrocket/status/1649425500526329863


oof

 

[inigo88]

Here’s the tweet from 2 years ago about stage 0 shown in the video:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1313952039869788173

View: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1313952039869788173

 

[CoffeeIcePapers]

This. So much.

This is how engineering happens. By failure. Thank Buddha. I guarantee you the Artemis astronauts are watching this going, “ok cool - that broke - let’s fix it and keep breaking it until it doesn’t break.”

I was - to my surprise - a bit excited for them to succeed. It was actually fun.

Not enough of that feeling in this world.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Funny, if you talk to someone at SpaceX, this was a success. They got it off the ground and got a lot of data. The next version is already much better, and now they have data to make it even better.