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Neonmoon

By Neonmoon
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cabowabo

cabowabo 4487

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The official SpaceX coverage is hard for me to digest.  Listening to all those hipsters cheering while I'm trying to hear the official commentary is annoying.  They need to go back and watch old NASA Mission Control videos to see how they should be carrying themselves during launches.   Ties, short sleeve shirts, cigarettes, etc.  

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RamjetFDO
RamjetFDO
RamjetFDO
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Got a buddy who does launch photography at the cape ... this is one of his (just released):

RamjetFDO
RamjetFDO

Couple more from my launch photography friend ... cool time lapse shots:  

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Sabalo

Sabalo 996

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7 hours ago, NoName said:

launch mount got smoked. took them ~12 months? to build it and that thing looks completely done.

FuP0Bs2X0AAenmE.jpg:orig

not sure what this explosion is/was but interesting to see (red arrows)

 

Thanks for posting. First time I've seen the OLM since the launch.

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Captainant

Captainant 27680

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8 hours ago, NoName said:

launch mount got smoked. took them ~12 months? to build it and that thing looks completely done.

FuP0Bs2X0AAenmE.jpg:orig

not sure what this explosion is/was but interesting to see (red arrows)

 

Yeah the Lab Padre gang was doing a livestream this afternoon because some of their camera equipment NEXT TO THE SITE is still up and live and working - everything about that launch pad is completely fucked and it's gonna have to be completely rebuilt and certified.

Scott Manley on Youtube mentioned that there's even some groundwater seeping into the blast crater from over 6 million collective pounds of thrust coming out the business end of Starship Heavy

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MonkeyDoughnut

MonkeyDoughnut 10301

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On 4/22/2023 at 12:33 AM, tx 3 putt said:

This launch was a huge environmental mess, do you think they get shut down for  a very long time  ?

I'd be surprised if next launch was within 18 months.  There were unknowns that were seriously underestimated and will require more tests and understanding. They were already planning launchpad upgrades, but now they have to go back and figure out if those are going to be enough (maybe but unlikely). With FAA getting final say they will now have to over do it to get clearance as FAA is going to be crossing T's and dotting I's on the next one.

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RamjetFDO

RamjetFDO 10577

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2 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Bartender just now: whenever a spacex rocket realizes something is going wrong, it automatically self-destructs. 
 

Doesn’t seem accurate. What say you nerds?  @RamjetFDO @Hagbard Celine

Nope.

That may have been the *plan* and certainly the *PR spin*, but this sucker kept going for a bit before it finally gave up the ghost.  It's very fortunate it was high enough and far enough out over the Gulf that it didn't meander its way back over somewhere populated.

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10871

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SpaceX making 'well over 1,000' changes to Starship ahead of next launch


By Mike Wall
published 26 June 2023

The most significant adjustment involves the giant vehicle's stage-separation process, which failed on the first flight.

 

SpaceX apparently learned a lot from the first-ever test flight of its giant Starship rocket two months ago.

The company has made more than 1,000 changes to Starship's design since that landmark April 20 liftoff, which ended with a controlled destruction of the vehicle high over the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk told journalist Ashlee Vance in a discussion on Twitter on Saturday (June 24).

SpaceX sent that self-destruct command after Starship experienced a number of problems, including the failure of the vehicle's two stages to separate as planned. The company is taking pains to ensure that latter issue doesn't recur on Starship's next flight, Musk said.

"So, we made a sort of late-breaking change that's really quite significant to the way that stage separation works, which is to use hot staging," Musk said.

Related: Relive SpaceX's explosive 1st Starship test flight in these incredible launch photos

In hot staging, the engines on a vehicle's upper stage begin firing before those on the first-stage booster finish shutting down. The strategy, which is commonly employed on Russian rockets, should boost Starship's payload-to-orbit capacity by around 10%, Musk said.

The decision to go with hot staging required a suite of design changes on Starship, however.

"The superhot plasma from the upper-stage engines has gotta go somewhere," Musk said. "So we're adding an extension to the booster that is almost all vents, essentially. So that allows the the upper-stage engine plume to go through the sort of vented extension of the booster and not just blow itself up."

The April 20 launch also caused considerable damage to the orbital launch mount at Starbase, SpaceX's facility on South Texas' Gulf Coast. The company has been working to repair that mount and protect it against similar damage on future launches.

For example, SpaceX is pouring about 35,300 cubic feet (1,000 cubic meters) of "reinforced high-strength concrete" at the mount. And the company is installing a water-spouting steel plate there as well, Musk said.

The plate is "basically like a gigantic upside-down shower head," he told Vance, who wrote a biography of Musk that was published in 2015. "It's basically gonna blast water upwards while the rocket is over the pad to counteract the massive amount of heat."

That heat comes from the 33 Raptor engines on Starship's first stage, a giant booster the company calls Super Heavy. The upper stage, a 165-foot-tall (50 meters) spacecraft known as Starship, sports six Raptors.

The Starship that flew on April 20 was powered by Raptors that "were somewhat of a hodgepodge," a collection that was built and tested over the course of a year or so, Musk said. The Starship being groomed for the next flight will feature more uniform engines with several slight but important improvements.

These changes are "very inside baseball," the billionaire entrepreneur told Vance. For instance, the new Raptors sport "an improved design of the hot gas manifold, as well as higher torque on the bolts of the hot gas manifold," Musk said.

The April 20 launch aimed to send Starship's upper stage partway around Earth, ending with a splashdown in the Pacific near Hawaii. The next liftoff will have similar aims, Musk has said.

The pad and the next Starship vehicle — consisting of prototypes called Booster 9 and Ship 25 — should be ready for a launch in roughly six weeks, he told Vance.

But SpaceX isn't in complete control of the timeline. For example, a coalition of environmental groups is currently suing the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, claiming the agency didn't properly assess the damage Starship launches can cause to the South Texas environment and community.

 

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Armybrat

Armybrat 40851

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On 7/14/2023 at 12:44 AM, Hagbard Celine said:

everyone up in here should subscribe to eric berger's Rocket Report, he's a horn

lots of important news in this week's edition

https://link.arstechnica.com/view/5d892326fc942d478883f557j3hla.gdt/02d416f4

most critically, a chinese outfit made orbit with methane

lots of other goodies

Fueled by cow farts?

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thunderlounge

thunderlounge 7866

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https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-2

 

Quote

The second flight test of a fully integrated Starshipis set to launch Saturday, November 18. A twenty-minute launch window opens at 7:00 a.m. CT.

A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 35 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to stay tuned to our X account for updates.

Starship’s first flight test provided numerous lessons learned that directly contributed to several upgrades to both the vehicle and ground infrastructure to improve the probability of success on future flights. The second flight test will debut a hot-stage separation system and a new electronic Thrust Vector Control (TVC) system for Super Heavy Raptor engines, in addition to reinforcements to the pad foundation and a water-cooled steel flame deflector, among many other enhancements.

This rapid iterative development approach has been the basis for all of SpaceX’s major innovative advancements, including Falcon, Dragon, and Starlink. Recursive improvement is essential as we work to build a fully reusable transportation system capable of carrying both crew and cargo to Earth orbit, help humanity return to the Moon, and ultimately travel to Mars and beyond.

 

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Captainant

Captainant 27680

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Scott Manley has a really good analysis of the hot staging performance and factors that may have caused the booster to fail. He's betting the moment of negative acceleration the booster got from the starship thrust during hot staging caused some water hammer from the liquids sloshing during the flip maneuver

 

 

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