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SpaceX Starship 36 Anomaly
- childintime 1y agoThe explosion starts at the upper part of starship, not the engine bay.
- trhway 1y agoYes, on 0.25x speed it is visible that a large leak quickly sprung up, like something burst, about where the top of the methane tank and exploded.
- rkagerer 1y agoHere's a framegrab showing what looks like the initial visible release of gas (before it becomes a big fireball), near the top where the arrow points: https://i.ibb.co/qYrn4vSf/image.png https://i.ibb.co/qYrn4vSf/image.png
- goku12 1y agoIn that image, you can see a white horizontal line on the heat shield, slightly below the point where the tank bursts. That was already there when the longer video clip starts. The tank later bursts along that line, even before the spilled propellant (which I assume is methane) catches fire. In fact, that line seems to be breaking apart even before the crack from the top reaches that point. However, the failure from the top might have propagated to that line out of our view, underneath the heat resistant tiles. The crack propagation indicates that the line was a weak point on the structure. However, I'm surprised that it was already there. It's too early to make a reliable guess. But if I were to hazard one, I would say that the tank had too much pressure, well ahead of the explosion.
- trhway 1y agoThe earlier Starships were just manually welded steel. Is still so? If any failed weld can lead to a catastrophe like this, how would you guarantee the quality of each weld without going into nuclear power plant construction level of costs?
- XorNot 1y agoX-ray weld inspection is standard in the pipe fitting industry. Even with automation you wouldn't bet your rocket on "probably okay".
- timschmidt 1y agoPipelines still break from time to time.
- goku12 1y agoThese tests are applicable only to manufacturing or service-time defects. Pipelines can still break in the dynamic environment of spaceflight. Such problems are design problems, not manufacturing defects.
- goku12 1y ago> The earlier Starships were just manually welded steel. Is still so? I don't know if they use manual welding or robotic welding. But robotic welding is well established and is justified for the volumes of work that SpaceX carries out. What is more difficult is to avoid vertical weld seams on its cylindrical segments. I'm yet to encounter a roll forged cylinder that big, especially with stainless steel. (Disclaimer: I have no direct experience with industrial metalworking) > If any failed weld can lead to a catastrophe like this, how would you guarantee the quality of each weld without going into nuclear power plant construction level of costs? That is done using Non-destructive testing (NDTs). The usual methods are high-energy X-ray imaging, ultrasound testing (UT) and dye penetration testing (DP). These methods are usually reliable in catching such faults - even for machinery that's in use. For example, turbine blades in a jet engine. Updated: As the other commenter pointed out, robotic welding doesn't ensure elimination of defects. The robotic process is more consistent and therefore reduces the defects. But uncontrollable random variations can still cause defects that could fail later. The only way to eliminate them (almost) entirely is to identify them with NDT and rectify them as long as the defects are within a certain tolerance limit.
- iw7tdb2kqo9 1y agoThere is one closeup slow motion https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1lf3gsu/superslow_motion_spacex_ship_36_explosion/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1lf3g...
- quotemstr 1y agoCould have been worse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlQkeKa4IKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlQkeKa4IKg Chinese static fire accidentally becomes not-static.
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- Analemma_ 1y agoPretty bad: it blew up on the pad before the static fire test even started. I can’t imagine this provides much in the way of useful information, and it looks like the pad was completely destroyed as well.
- TheAlchemist 1y ago[flagged]
- bamboozled 1y ago[flagged]
- nekinie 1y agoRapid unplanned disassembly. Hopefully the ground equipment is not too damaged (unlikely) and block 3 has more success.
- bamboozled 1y agoI'm pretty sure it's over for that launch pad for a very long time.
- trothamel 1y agoThat wasn't a launch pad - that was a test stand used to test the Startship proper without the rest of the system.
- wombatpm 1y agoProbably could use more than one launch pad with the tank farms centrally located and protected.
- m4rtink 1y agoThey are finishing another pad on the launch site & the explosion happened on a separate test site from the main launch site.
- riffraff 1y agolivestreaming with the ongoing firefighting stil live https://www.youtube.com/live/WKwWclAKYa0?feature=shared https://www.youtube.com/live/WKwWclAKYa0?feature=shared
- mongol 1y agoWas able to reverse to about -1:49:00 to see it "live". But probably this relative timestamp was only current then. In any case, that was a massive explosion
- opello 1y agoThis is a clip of just the explosion: https://x.com/i/status/1935548909805601020 https://x.com/i/status/1935548909805601020 Unfortunately just on Twitter, haven't seen much elsewhere yet. But the link seems to work. The frame of the video has a burnt in clock in the top left corner though, so if you get that to be about 11:01:50 PM CDT you'll be at the point of the explosion.
- markx2 1y agoSuper slow motion clip. https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1lf3gsu/superslow_motion_spacex_ship_36_explosion/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1lf3g...
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- buryat 1y ago[flagged]
- ethan_smith 1y agoNASA astronauts continue to regularly fly on Crew Dragon missions with the next one (Crew-9) scheduled for August 2025, suggesting professional astronauts maintain confidence in SpaceX's human-rated vehicles despite development issues with Starship.
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- seydor 1y agoIt's an explosion. It would be an anomaly if it happened rarely
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- roer 1y agoA starship static fire (seems to even be pre-"fire") explosion is very rare.
- nomilk 1y agoThis was a entire ship (not just an engine), and nobody was hurt or killed. Is this a major or minor setback for SpaceX? Rapid unscheduled disassemblies may look spectacularly bad but may be par for the course during testing (in order to push things to their limits to learn where they break) - curious to learn how bad this one is.
- roer 1y agoIn terms of losing a ship, probably not too bad. The ground equipment might take a bit longer to replace, and they will probably want to understand what happened here before continuing. Or, as you suggest, this was a more stressing test than usual, but I doubt they'd do that with a complete ship like this.
- tsimionescu 1y agoIt's a gigantic setback. Most directly, it will delay their launches for a good time while they repair and rebuild the site. But it also shows some kind of severe design flaws if this can happen even with no engines running.
- jmaestrooper 1y agoMight actually not be a design flaw, just a leak due to rushed production. But these should be caught BEFORE the thing blows up and causes X million worth of damage.
- riffraff 1y agoI think you're extrapolating too much. This could be a "simple" production error (think "cracked pipe") which can be fixed with more effective monitoring of the construction, and not a major design flaw. It might be someone forgot a wrench somewhere for what we know.
- XorNot 1y agoI worry that the current "favorable" FAA environment is leading to a regression in their engineering quality honestly. There's a simple fault, and then there's the question of why did it happen anyway?
- bamboozled 1y ago[flagged]
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- rapsey 1y agoIt seems starship still has a long way to go.
- zeroping 1y ago(obligatory dad-joke) It seems like parts of this one went pretty far!
- StopDisinfo910 1y agoI think it’s interesting that SpaceX is struggling so much with the shift to a full flow staged combustion engine using liquid methane. We knew from the Soviet that it was going to be really hard but after the successful flights I thought they had it in the bag. We might be touching on the limits of SpaceX constant tweaking fail fast approach.
- rapsey 1y agoIf the task is difficult, what other approach is there?
- beaned 1y agoThere are rovers on Mars already that landed on the first try. The approach was rigorous planning and study with the highest standards. It doesn't mean the approach SpaceX is taking isn't valuable in some contexts, but it's certainly not the only method.
- Teever 1y agoThat seems like a poor example given how many failed attempts to land something on Mars that took place before they got to designs that would get it right in the first go.
- yborg 1y agoThe Viking landers were the first attempt by the US to land on Mars. The Soviets actually soft-landed first on their second try but the lander failed after transmitting one corrupted image. There were certainly many failed Mars missions by various countries, but the Vikings at least got it right on the first go.
- mstipetic 1y agoThe rocket booster landing of mars rover also hasn’t been tried before.
- 1y ago
- mrtksn 1y agoSo apparently SpaceX is building many of those all the time and the latest spotted one in development is Starship 42: https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_42_(S42) https://starship-spacex.fandom.com/wiki/Ship_42_(S42) I guess how much of a setback this is will be determined by how much damage is there on the facilities and the nature of the cause of the explosion(do they need to re-work the next 6 already being assembled so it doesn't happen again?).
- shmoe 1y agoThey cant seem to match launch cadence to ship progression. This will most certainly set them back a few more weeks beyond the end of this month.
- MPSimmons 1y agoLikely longer as this was the only test site for Starship and there will hopefully be an FAA investigation.
- fsh 1y agoThe problems with Starship make the Saturn V and STS programs even more impressive. However, I still don't get the rationale of building a rocket with such a large payload. The rocket equation will always force you to build an absolute monster compared to a series of smaller rockets. Even worse if you have to haul up a massive orbiter each time. No wonder that small/medium sized rockets (Soyuz, Atlas, Ariane, Falcon 9,...) have always been the most successful.
- quotemstr 1y ago> STS programs The shuttle was a deathtrap. It had inadequate abort modes and a launch process that practically guaranteed minor (until it wasn't) damage to the heat shield during launch. Classic example of https://danluu.com/wat/ https://danluu.com/wat/ --- the normalization of deviance. STS crews were lucky that only two of the things got violenly disassembled.
- fsh 1y agoSure, the Saturn V and STS were much less safe than smaller rockets. Still, they blew up an awful lot less than other rockets of their size like N1 or Starship.
- nomel 1y ago> Still, they blew up an awful lot less than other rockets of their size like N1 or Starship. I think the only reasonable comparison would be after cost equivalency. The Starship has a long way to go, to catch up.
- jeroenhd 1y agoCost equivalency ignores the R&D and decades of scientific progress and advancements in tooling capability. The prices of materials have shifted, but designing and manufacturing a precise propulsion system with modern CAD and simulation tools is a lot cheaper than the hand work hundreds of people used to be doing to verify much simpler engine designs. Precision machining and tools to inspect metal fatigue and imperfections have also come a long way. Of course commercial rockets are always going to be as shoddy as they can get away with rather than as good as possible, but if it still takes SpaceX or Boeing as much money to build a rocket as it did back in the Saturn V days, they're doing something wrong.
- _Yguy_ 1y ago"rapid unscheduled disassembly"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- selivanovp 1y agoIt looks like a fuel tank had a leak.
- shmoe 1y agoSpaceX supporters can only call this "moving fast, breaking stuff" for so long as the entire program regresses in on itself in terms of milestones. This was never easy, but the Falcon program sure made it look so.
- jillesvangurp 1y agoFalcon also was hard. They had a few failures and nearly went bankrupt in the process of successfully launching for the first time. > the entire program regresses in on itself in terms of milestones. The alternative would be looking at the competing programs from Boeing, Blue Origin, etc. It's not like they are hitting their milestones particularly well with their more traditional waterfall approach. The point of rapid iteration is that it is an inherently open ended process that has no milestones other than to launch the next iteration within weeks/months of the previous one. Which they have been doing fairly consistently. If SpaceX gets starship in a launcheable and recoverable state, they'll still have many years of competing against competitors that have to rely on single launch vehicles exclusively. They would be very early to market. And there's a decent chance they might start nailing things with a few more launches.
- shmoe 1y agoThey didn't regress like starship has though... they literally just went from orbit to controlled landing in ocean and catching the booster on a fork to the ships blowing up in orbit or not making it there and the boosters aborting the catch for a controlled landing offshore or blowing up as well. Now they have regressed to blowing up on the pad during static testing. Seems very different to me than the Falcon story, 100%. Granted, they had luck too.
- DoesntMatter22 1y agoThey literally left astronauts stranded on the space station
- adaml_623 1y ago
- senectus1 1y agoAnomaly? The thing detonated from the top down... that was spectacular. Anomaly doesn't really describe that very well.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- d--b 1y agoMove fast and break huge things
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- jlmorton 1y agoHigh quality, slow motion video: https://x.com/dwisecinema/status/1935552171912655045 https://x.com/dwisecinema/status/1935552171912655045
- irjustin 1y agoThanks for this! here's the live stream from the team: https://youtu.be/WKwWclAKYa0?t=6989 https://youtu.be/WKwWclAKYa0?t=6989
- gcanyon 1y agoThat makes it look pretty clearly like one of the fuel vessels overpressured and ruptured.
- imglorp 1y agoScott Manley observes the breach was in the cargo section, and not at the PEZ dispenser door. It appeared to split longitudinally. There are header tank downcomer lines that might fit that bill. https://youtu.be/0C_L-qgHsE0?t=299 https://youtu.be/0C_L-qgHsE0?t=299
- consumer451 1y agoThe part that I found interesting was ~"Anyone can build a bridge, but it takes an engineer to just barely build a bridge. That's what Starship V2 is, a mass and complexity reduction. Maybe they took away too much."
- gcanyon 1y agoI'll defer to Scott Manley any day -- this seems like a refinement of what I said.
- 93po 1y agoid be curious what causes the ignition of all the fuel in a breach like this.
- Robotbeat 1y ago
- eqvinox 1y agoThe pad might actually have less damage than one might assume; that explosion started at the top. The bottom parts of the pad will mostly have heat & fire damage, but not explosion? (It'll still be fucked, I just wouldn't expect a crater?)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- m4rtink 1y agoWith the Amos explosion on Falcon 9 IIRC the issue was with burning kerosene seeping into the pad, damaging it quite a bit. Both methane and liquid oxygen should burn or evaporate before really pooling on the pad infrastructure, so there could really be less damage. Still, there was probably more energy stored in the Starship propelants than in the Falcon 9 case.
- eqvinox 1y agoYeah I'm just speculating, there's no actual data yet anyway. Random other shit might've cascade failed too, so…
- goku12 1y agoI'm not so sure. The biggest explosion I saw in the video was right at the base. I think that the liquid methane spilled and fell to the ground. Probably the oxygen tank also burst by that time, spilling LOX right into the path of the falling liquid methane - creating a nice mixture of methane and oxygen right at the base, ready to explode.
- lofaszvanitt 1y ago[flagged]
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- zx8080 1y agoWhy is this called "anomaly"? It's "exploded".
- jeroenhd 1y agoIt normally doesn't explode of course! The linked tweet literally says "it blew up", though. "Anomaly" is just a word used in rocket science lingo that makes for a funnier headline.
- MPSimmons 1y agoIn spaceflight, an anomaly is an anomalous outcome compared to what was expected. The severity of the anomaly varies. Typically, if the world outside of the organization hears about an anomaly, it was severe enough to cause a Loss of Mission (LOM) or Loss of Vehicle (LOV). Internally, when things behave anomalously, they're referred to as off-nominal, and are subject to internal investigations to determine the cause. This is a _very_ off-nominal outcome and the investigation will absolutely involve outside organizations and halting the program during the investigation until the investigation completes with a sufficient determination of faults and accompanying remediation plans.
- tekla 1y agoIn engineering, there is a preference for accurate terminology
- kuschkufan 1y agolol, it's an euphemism. don't drag engineering into this.
- seydor 1y agoMaybe it's time to consider a smaller Starship
- randomcarbloke 1y agoIn 2020 Elon said they'd build 100 Starships a year, last year (2024) he said they would build 1 per day. I have to ask if the world needs 365 $100mm fireworks each year.
- drcongo 1y ago[flagged]
- glowiefedposter 1y agoDo you have to ask?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- marvin 1y agoWell, you can make things yourself worth 365 x 100 million and decide to use them for something else. Fortunately, the rules in well-functioning societies do not allow anyone other than the owner of something to decide how it should be used.
- randomcarbloke 1y agoIf you spend your own money sure why not, I couldn't agree more, but it's the taxpayer's. This very same individual was until recently trying to highlight frivolous government spending, surprisingly coming up short, obviously it'd be very cynical of me to suggest even a hint of hypocrisy let alone a conflict of interest so I'll leave it.
- throwaway758395 1y agoSpaceX is not financed by taxpayer money and I believe its contracts are paid on reached milestones.
- randomcarbloke 1y ago
- amitrip 1y ago[dead]
- Cipater 1y ago[flagged]
- aqme28 1y agoWhat are they wrong about?
- dcminter 1y agoIt's fairly clear that v2 has some problems and that SpaceX have not got to the bottom of them. It's not clear whether that's a series of small things of which this is (perhaps) the last, or something systemic where solving one problem moves the problem further along the chain. But on the other hand, this is a test programme and while I'm sure nobody at SpaceX is sanguine about this particular explosion, their philosophy is still leaning towards more-frequent higher-risk tests. An explosion of this kind with SLS would be a catastrophe for that programme. For Starship it's a setback - but seems very unlikely to derail the programme in the same way. The costs of an individual Starship are dramatically lower than those for an SLS second stage. The prize that SpaceX are reaching for is full reusability; achieving it would allow them to totally dominate the launch industry for at least a decade. It's worth a few detonations. I think a lot of commentators are drawing too much pleasure from seeing Musk fail at his hobby (and, fair, he's a total areshole, I'm enjoying that a little too) to put this particular failure in its proper perspective. Now, if they have another failure or two, or particularly if they have similar failures with v3 then it will start to look like they might have a bigger problem - but for now this is just part of the price you pay for rapid iteration.
- ludicrousdispla 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71AwkBt3_ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71AwkBt3_ts
- aqme28 1y agoImportant to note that it exploded "prior" to the planned test. That seems really really bad to me, and potentially even dangerous. It's one thing if a test fails -- tests are somewhat expected to fail occasionally. It's very very bad if it catastrophically fails before the test even starts.
- tlb 1y agoThe whole thing is a test. The risk of huge explosions starts when they load it with fuel, not when they fire the engines. There are risks even before that, like electrical fires or structural failures.
- aqme28 1y ago[flagged]
- tlb 1y agoIt's easy to make structures that don't fail: just make them 5x stronger than anticipated max loads. Sadly, this would make a rocket too heavy to reach orbit. So they end up being 1.1x stronger than anticipated loads. And it's hard to exactly anticipate loads. Vibration can add to a peak load, and it's notoriously hard to model how much vibration might happen. SpaceX rockets are filled with cryogenic methane at -160C, which causes everything it touches to shrink which creates forces between the parts that get cold and the parts that don't. A rocket-sized tank contracts by inches, but has to be supported by the structure around it. A single support member that doesn't move the right way can cause a fracture. So it's actually a hard problem.
- m4rtink 1y agoThere are is a way[1] how to gate a spacecraft 5x stronger (basically on the level of battleship style steel plate) to orbit - and then to Titan and back. The propulsion method just has some unfortunate side effect when launching from earths surface. Still it should work just fine & might come in as a handy option handy in an emergency. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall
- culebron21 1y agoThe program looks similar to the Soviet N1 program, in scale, testing and failures. Korolyov was in hurry to get to the moon, and tried to assemble everything and test in actual flight. After 4 failed test flights, the program was scrapped. This approach had worked with the R7 rocket (the Sputnik and Gagarin's booster, predecessor of Soyuz). But at this larger scale, it seems things break apart much easier if not properly tested in parts.
- londons_explore 1y agoDue to the scaling laws of rocketry, it should be easier to make a huge rocket. You can afford to have proportionally bigger safety margins on everything. I suspect that Musks desire to have everything reusable has severely eaten into those margins though. I personally think he'd have been better off making only the first stage ('booster') reusable for the first few years, which then lets you develop more things in parallel later (the first landers can be on mars whilst you're still figuring out second stage reusability)
- rsynnott 1y agoHistorically this hasn't _really_ been the case; the N1, of course, was a bit of a disaster, this one seems to be similar. Saturn V worked, but had a number of near-misses over a small number of launches. Beyond those, nothing in the super-heavy category has enough launches to draw conclusions.
- Retric 1y agoThere’s little need for big rockets, falcon heavy has flown 11 times including the initial test flight Feb 2018. Going fully reusable may change that equation, but first stage reuse probably isn’t enough to make the program even close to worthwhile.
- HPsquared 1y agoFull reusability would totally change the game. It'd be an order-of-magnitude cost reduction. Maybe even 2 orders of magnitude (cost per kg to orbit)
- huhtenberg 1y ago[flagged]
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- goku12 1y agoI see that comments mentioning the 'move fast and break stuff' philosophy are downvoted quickly here. While I don't have any direct knowledge of the Starship design and the SpaceX work culture, I do have years of experience in both the launch vehicle industry as well as the software industry. I feel that the concerns with this approach are dismissed too easily. It's true that SpaceX has been an industry disruptor and a trend setter, especially with the Falcon series launchers. But Falcon and Starship are two fundamentally different vehicles and the success of one doesn't guarantee the success of the other. And there may be good reasons why the Starship is struggling when the Falcon 9 became a success that's unlike any before. To start with, Falcon 9 and Starship may share some technologies. But they use different engines, engine cycles, propellants, structural materials and dynamics and even manufacturing processes. SS and Falcon are more dissimilar than any other two launchers I've seen from a single company. There are a lot of design data and procedures that you simply can't carry over from one to the other. The only thing you can realistically carry over is the zealousness with which the design and production quality is enforced. But problems like the repeated failure of the Starship fuel lines raise questions about that zealousness. (In my experience, a traditional space industry facing such issues during the development phase would simply throw out the propellant circuit design and start from scratch, paying more attention to its structural integrity. Frankly, I've seen worse. But that approach is present in the Raptor design. Look how different v1, v2 an v3 are.) I think everyone here knows that the 'move fast and break things' culture has its roots in the agile development methodology from the silicon valley. Meanwhile, the traditional space development methodology has its roots at NASA. It's even more rigorous than the waterfall methodology used in the software industry, with numerous levels of elaborate reviews for designs, test plans, tests results, integration, schedules, status and even the documentation. From what I understood, the agile methodology is optimized to maximize revenue in a project where the underlying tech stack is reasonably well understood and proven. But it's a poor match for a project where the costs, stakes, complexity, subsystem interdependence, uncertainty in subsystem reliability and lack of engineering margins are all very high. Space launcher is the poster child of such projects. Agile is not even suitable for software projects where you're developing something novel and complex. The main problem with Agile is the 'let's push to production and see what fails' approach. I'm aware that there are elaborate QA procedures to augment the methodology. But the project is much more tolerant to QA failures. Unlike that, you can't simply leave a flaw in a launcher or its subsystem design and hope to resolve it later. Such flaws are technical debts that will stay hidden for a while and then fail spectacularly on a random day, like the holes in a Swiss cheese. Remember that subsystem interdependence is very high. Failures cascade in ways you couldn't have dreamt of. And the required corrections are elaborate, costly, time consuming and often spanning multiple subsystems. The only reasonable way to manage so much uncertainty is to design meticulously for all foreseeable failures from the start, validating those assumptions at every step of the way (This is why they sometimes throw away faulty designs entirely). And that takes a lot of time and focus. The current approach of 'we will launch in one month to make up for this failure' makes me a bit uncomfortable. I'm not trying to dismiss SpaceX's approach outright. The biggest aspect of any launcher development is the management of complexity and uncertainty. Perhaps they will find a good way to do that without slowing down. They sure have a lot of smart and hardworking employees. But if I were asked to manage one again, I will choose the NASA style again over the agile style. I'm not smart enough to manage with any other method, the level of uncertainties and complexities I expect from a mid-heavy launcher design, much less something like the Starship. Remember that the management culture was one of the hottest topics in the investigation of the Challenger disaster. Perhaps it's a good idea to revisit the findings of that investigation, as well as the venerable and effective Apollo design philosophy.
- gcanyon 1y agoI'm imagining Elon like Jeff Bridges in Iron Man, shouting at his team, "The Apollo program built a heavy lifter rocket in the sixties, with a box of scraps!"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mlindner 1y agoSure, but Elon's (SpaceX really) isn't trying to build a heavy lift rocket (they already have one in the Falcon Heavy, and technically even the Falcon 9 in expendable mode) they're trying to build a fully reusable vehicle, and you need a rocket the size of Starship to have enough margin to afford the hardware for reuse on the vehicle.
- mulmen 1y ago[flagged]
- goku12 1y agoThey're referring to the dialogue by Obadiah Stane in Iron man. But it's also appropriate in some sense if you consider how they made the carbon dioxide scrubber in-flight in Apollo 13.
- mulmen 1y agoI understand the reference. It just doesn’t work with the famously well funded and resourced Apollo program.
- goku12 1y agoI agree that they were well funded. But the designs were complete genius. They were exceptionally clever with the use of rudimentary technologies they had at the time. One of my favorites is how they used an Archimedes spiral in celestial attitude determination. It isn't too farfetched to say that they used scraps to build the program - they just MacGyvered through every challenge they faced.
- dcminter 1y agoAt the risk of being a bit Polly-Anna-ish this might be a good thing in the medium term for the project. If this has the same root cause as the in-flight failures of v2, they at least have a chance to analyse the failed components directly instead of having to infer purely from instrumentation what happened.
- OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago[dead]
- Out_of_Characte 1y agoWhat's really vexing to me is how spacex refuses to build a triple stage rocket. Their 'reusability' adds a significant amount of mass in terms of heatshield and in terms of fuel margins for landing. Using additional stages benefits them more than saturn V. They likely thought they could get away with two stages and have them both return to the launch site, one the short way, the other the long way around. But the exclusion of a multi stage reusable architecture means that their empty mass fraction becomes a linchpin in bringing anything into orbit. No wonder there's a v2 and v3 with much, much larger fuel tanks and less payload.
- Gravityloss 1y agoI guess one issue with that is that the second stage will land far from the launch site. In theory if it has sea level engines for landing, it could fly back though (after refueling).
- m4rtink 1y agoStarship has 3 sea level engines for landing + 3 vacuum optimized engines.
- Gravityloss 1y agoYes. My "if" could have been a "since it probably".
- mlindner 1y agoA triple stage rocket when you're trying to do reuse is actually a negative. The second stage needs significant heat shielding as a result which drastically eats into the size of the upper stage and your ultimate payload.
- jmaestrooper 1y agoThe full and rapid reuseability is the ultimate goal. Make rocket launches as frequent and routine as commercial plane flights. Whether they use it for Mars or Moon on Earth-to-Earth or anything in between is irrelevant, this will revolutionize entire industries. Just look at the share of Falcon 9 comparing to all other launch providers, and that one is only half-reuseable. If they manage to get the StarShip right this will be a game changer.
- chasd00 1y agoLooks like a production defect. Will be interesting to see what QA process failed.
- beshur 1y agoWell, it clearly says "Static fire"
- yonatan8070 1y agoI don't think that was very "static"
- stevage 1y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C_L-qgHsE0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C_L-qgHsE0 for some early analysis.
- t1234s 1y agoAny idea if their Prufrock tunnel boring machine (or sections of it) could fit within starship?
- t1234s 1y agoAlso I imagine some version of the cybertruck would be used as a moon buggy. Any idea on how many could fit inside starship?
- steveBK123 1y agoHas the media coverage become more selectively focussed on the failures, or has the success rate of their move-fast-and-break-things approach really fallen off the last ~6-12 months?
- simmonmt 1y agoIf it bleeds it leads. Also a bunch of people are cheering Musk's failures, so anything along those lines gets even more clicks.
- steveBK123 1y agoSure but I also remember watching a number of very impressive launches, landings, etc "firsts". Recently I don't recall any of these, and this was watching SpaceX direct streams on their site.
- dmix 1y agoThey are testing V2 of Starship so it provides more opportunity for this sort of thing, not entirely a linear progression.
- faefox 1y agoIt's silly to try to pin this on media bias or Musk haters when the fact is that every Starship launched in 2025 has exploded.
- simmonmt 1y agoI'm not pinning anything. I'm commenting on why SpaceX failures get more press than SpaceX successes. If it bleeds it leads is the way it's always been. And I'd be remiss to point out that there's /more/ appetite for it in the case of SpaceX because of feelings towards Musk.
- faefox 1y agoAlthough I feel like SpaceX's successes (many of which have been truly remarkable, like the booster catches) get plenty of press themselves, you make a fair point. I apologize for taking your previous comment in bad faith. :)
- ReptileMan 1y agoBtw - has anyone thought how fully reusable starship eith those launch costs would revolutionize warfare. Being able to drop 50-60 tons of explosive from orbit for the cost of 1-2 million dollars while being untouchable is something I am sure that is at least part of current us military wet dreams.
- stogot 1y agoIt costs more than 1-2 million. $70million for a falcon 9 launch
- testing22321 1y agoInternal cost to SpaceX is estimated to be $15 million for Falcon 9.
- goku12 1y agoThey're pitching something similar to the US military. The proposal is to use the Starship (the spacecraft alone without the Super Heavy booster) as a suborbital personnel/cargo carrier. Personally though, I'm a bit skeptical about the whole concept. And they're certainly not untouchable. At least 3 other nations have the ability to knock them out in space. And 2 of them are hostile towards the US.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 1y agoNow they can't even load propellant. They're going backwards!
- 93po 1y agoyes they're so far behind the competition like boeing... spacex is only doing... checks notes.... 90% of all mass to orbit these days
- The_President 1y agoUnsustainable rate of failures due to the associated costs. SpaceX might have to go public to capture funding opportunities, which would inevitably result in more accountability toward ensuring successful flight development. When the execution of their tech works it is highly impressive. Track record of success rate proven by the Falcon program. Does anyone have the numbers on how much these ships cost each? I've seen estimates of $100 million for a full Starship stack.
- jacobkranz 1y agoI doubt they’d need to go public. Regardless of your views on Elon, he’s consistently raised billions privately whenever needed. Even without Starship, SpaceX seems cash-flow positive and profitable thanks to Starlink and Falcon 9. It’s simpler to ask private investors to back his R&D efforts when they’re investing in an already profitable company excluding the R&D. Going public might echo Tesla’s early days, when profitability of the company as a whole wasn’t guaranteed.
- lukeschlather 1y agoYeah, $100M is the estimate I have seen. Which actually makes their current track record seem very sustainable compared to SLS which has spent on the order of $4B per launch. This is the first unequivocal failure this year. Aspects of the previous flight failed but proving the booster can be reused was a significant milestone. And they can afford a dozen more of these launches while still being significantly cheaper than SLS.
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- jmward01 1y agoThe highs and lows of SpaceX have been interesting to watch. I have to wonder though if, at least partially, some of their recent troubles are partially because people are loosing passion for their mission. You can definitely see it in the reporting, and some of the comments here, that there is less willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt and while that is far from a technical measure, passion is a big part of what makes a team get through things and continue to make progress. I know for my own part there was a time where I was looking for positions at SpaceX purely because I wanted to be apart of what was going on but now you couldn't pay be enough to join them. If your key people start thinking of things as just a job instead of a world changing opportunity then your rapid iteration cycle can go from 'this is brilliant and gets things done fast so I better try harder' to 'this is stupid and I am putting in my minimum hours to get paid'.
- hiddencost 1y agoThis is what happened to Google.
- apples_oranges 1y agoThere are still people who have basic professionalism and desire to improve their skills, regardless of the vision they buy into or don't buy into. Motivation only goes so far, and in my humble opinion, unless Space X hiring was special in some way, the people who build space rockets are not the kind of people who underperform because they no longer buy the story. They just quit and excel elsewhere.
- fisherjeff 1y agoWell, equity vesting can be one reason to stick around and underperform
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoI could imagine that Musk's political escapades have driven away a lot of people. SpaceX may also have lost Musk as the referee who makes quick decisions and keeps things moving forward. I think people like Thorvalds, Gates, Jobs and Musk are a superpower for organizations. Their decisions may not always be perfect but at least a decision is made so people can proceed. Otherwise you end up with the usual committee decisions that take forever and are mostly driven by internal politics and not about the product.
- LightBug1 1y agolol
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- amai 1y agoBiggest reusable explosion machine?
- gpxyz 1y agoA couple years ago, I happened to overhear a conversation at lunch between two men I gathered were SpaceX engineers. (They were talking very loudly, so it was difficult not to listen in.) Rather than discuss the mission of the company, or anything that showed passion for their job, they instead spent most of the lunch talking about how they were making “day in the life” TikToks and were trying to increase their follower counts, then about how they would drive 150+mph to Vegas since they could afford any speeding ticket if they got pulled over. Really struck me as a red flag for the company that their employees were much more concerned about their own social status than anything they were working on. I suppose incidents like this may well be the result of these attitudes becoming commonplace.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoOh wow, what a hearsay. I really don't get people who be like "Lets undermine all humanity's progress because I don't like Elon Musk". Don't know if you are so stupid or so cynical, but I'm sorry for you anyway.