DanicaFreak
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great stream to watch.
Space X Starship launch attempt
- Thread starter DanicaFreak
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great stream to watch.
DanicaFreak
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second attempt today in an hr
DanicaFreak
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launch and a RUD (Rapid unscheduled Disassembly)
dpkimmel2001
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Watched it. Was awesome. I don't truly know what their objective was today. Seeing it fail to septate didn't look correct but they seem happy. So, I don't know what to think.
DanicaFreak
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dpkimmel2001
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I had different expectations but that was only because of the announcing crew. They indicated things that were going to happen after launch that didn't occur.
I gotta say though, for me anyhow, there's something about that countdown to launch that gets the adrenaline pumping. As a kid I grew up during the Apollo era. Watched many manned rockets take flight. I think, even at that age, I understood the dangers of missions and the gravity of the situation. I get that same feeling watching a launch like the one today. Even though it was unmanned. Awesome stuff. For a brief time I was probably 50 years younger this morning.
DanicaFreak
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SAME!!!! so much same!!! I was grinning ear to ear watching that count down
I saw some comments online asking how Apollo got to the moon and back on basically no technology, while modern day struggles to get out of the atmosphere.
My reply:
Back in the Apollo era, alot of stuff was done manually by a test animal or a human. These days, we are relying on electronics - timers, remote commands, and pure gyroscope autonomy. The space shuttle was a good bit of both manual input and electronic control.
When you're moving at 1600 Km/h like Starship was, one second of control latency is half a kilometer of travel distance. There's alot that can go wrong between instructions, regardless of it being an autonomous instruction, manual override instruction from the ground, or a valve or control surface actuator getting stuck. Additionally, one bad PCB trace anywhere on that vehicle or some electric component that wasn't secured to the circuit board just perfect can mean instant or delayed boom.
Keep in mind how many rockets blew up before SpaceX got one to land perfectly vertical and stay there.
Keep in mind how many rockets got blown up in the middle of the desert before they put an apollo capsule on top (most probably undocumented or still stuck in military seals)
These Raptor engines are also using a far more voliate fuel than the Saturn and Shuttle used, and are not even similar to the Merlin engines that are used on other spaceX craft. Instead of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen of the Apollo/Shuttle days, or Kerosene and liquid Oxygen used by the Merlin, these Raptors use nearly frozen (cryogenic) liquid methane and liquid oxygen for higher storage density. There is a reason the FAA took well over a year to authorize this launch - SpaceX basically requested to launch an 11-million-pound bomb with 16.5 million pound-force of thrust off the ground with zero assurance that everything would go right on first try.
Thus, this outcome is nothing unusual for this stage of flight. I'm personally impressed it made it 33 miles and 4 minutes into the atmosphere.
My reply:
Back in the Apollo era, alot of stuff was done manually by a test animal or a human. These days, we are relying on electronics - timers, remote commands, and pure gyroscope autonomy. The space shuttle was a good bit of both manual input and electronic control.
When you're moving at 1600 Km/h like Starship was, one second of control latency is half a kilometer of travel distance. There's alot that can go wrong between instructions, regardless of it being an autonomous instruction, manual override instruction from the ground, or a valve or control surface actuator getting stuck. Additionally, one bad PCB trace anywhere on that vehicle or some electric component that wasn't secured to the circuit board just perfect can mean instant or delayed boom.
Keep in mind how many rockets blew up before SpaceX got one to land perfectly vertical and stay there.
Keep in mind how many rockets got blown up in the middle of the desert before they put an apollo capsule on top (most probably undocumented or still stuck in military seals)
These Raptor engines are also using a far more voliate fuel than the Saturn and Shuttle used, and are not even similar to the Merlin engines that are used on other spaceX craft. Instead of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen of the Apollo/Shuttle days, or Kerosene and liquid Oxygen used by the Merlin, these Raptors use nearly frozen (cryogenic) liquid methane and liquid oxygen for higher storage density. There is a reason the FAA took well over a year to authorize this launch - SpaceX basically requested to launch an 11-million-pound bomb with 16.5 million pound-force of thrust off the ground with zero assurance that everything would go right on first try.
Thus, this outcome is nothing unusual for this stage of flight. I'm personally impressed it made it 33 miles and 4 minutes into the atmosphere.
SpaceX Starship Grounded Indefinitely By FAA - FLYING Magazine
Elon Musk said it would be “a success” if last week’s Starship launch didn’t destroy the launchpad—it did, and then some.
www.flyingmag.com
