SpaceX Starship explodes on landing in latest test of Mars-bound craft

[question everything]

Source: Yahoo Finance

SpaceX has performed the latest high-altitude flight test of its Mars-bound Starship spacecraft, resulting in a huge explosion upon landing. The Starship SN9 prototype launched from SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas on Tuesday, reaching a height of roughly 10km before belly flopping back to Earth.

Before reaching the landing pad it performed a complex landing flip manoeuvre but failed to right itself properly and crashed on the landing pad. A previous attempt to launch and land a Starship prototype in December also resulted in a fiery explosion after a botched landing.

SpaceX emphasized both the importance and difficulty of achieving a safe landing for Starship in a post on its website ahead of Tuesday’s launch. “A controlled aerodynamic descent with body flaps and vertical landing capability, combined with in-space refilling, are critical to landing Starship at destinations across the solar system where prepared surfaces or runways do not exist, and returning to Earth,” the post stated.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk previously stated that he hopes to manufacture up to 100 Starship crafts every year, each capable of carrying up to 100 people.


Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spacex-starship-explodes-landing-latest-203644253.html

[iluvtennis]

1. Sorry to hear about the crash. Hope they can pinpoint the failure(s) and make the mods

to prevent in the future.

[lagomorph777]

12. I watched. Looked like another engine failure (first time was caused by fuel sloshing).

[iluvtennis]

17. Thanks for the info. I love space related stuff, so want this to succeed. WOuld also like to see

our NASA make a come back.

[lagomorph777]

21. They'll nail it. Spacex isn't afraid to fail fast and often.

They blew up several fuel tanks before actually assembling the first Starship.

[OnlinePoker]

23. If you look at the SpaceX feed, it looked like the engine broke on relight.

You can see one engine burning fine, but the second sputtering, and then at the top of the engine a ball of fire (11:45-11:50 of the linked video). Earlier, just after lift-off, you could see flames surrounding the engines as well (around the 6th minute of the video).

[lagomorph777]

24. Also, some pieces fell off at that time. So, yes, a different kind of engine failure.

And that's sort of a mark of progress.

[msongs]

2. that the one the billionaires wanna ride? nt

[StClone]

3. I was told by an engineer

One big cost saving, slimming down operations, performers preview by SpaceX is lowered redundancy systems in the program compared to NASA. NASA was absolutely over-cautious replete with triple or more redundancy to save equipment and/or lives. I have no way to confirm this and if anyone has insight into this observation I am interested. He says that is why he is expecting an absolutely colossal failure at some point equal the Challenge/Columbia disaster a lot sooner than NASA did.

[SmartJellyfish]

15. Not exactly

Spacex develops their programs on the principle of "iteration". The first try will have the basic functions figured out with the subsystems maybe 80% done. Then they test, understand what went wrong, and fix it for the next flight and so on. The iteration process is faster to engineer a complex system than the NASA method of "Analysis Paralysis". Waiting until everything is designed to the Nth degree before flying is a safe but slow process.

SpaceX can do iteration like this because they are fast and have a team of young and motivated engineers doing the work. They can design and manufacture the fixes in about 1/10th the time any other aerospace company. Not an exaggeration.

In the end, the final systems that will carry humans into space will have been tested 100's of times and WILL have the triple redundant backup as necessary for safety where appropriate.

[Polybius]

4. The announcer actually said "we just gotta work on that landing a little bit"

I kid you not, at 12:44.

&feature=emb_logo

[Dem2theMax]

7. I don't know why it reminds me of this, but it does.

[Steelrolled]

18. Reminds of the joke

about an airliner that had made an unusually rough landing. On exiting the plane, an elderly lady asked the pilot "Did you land this plane, or were we shot down?"

Edit to fix typo.

[Dem2theMax]

25. .

I've never heard that one!

[Bayard]

5. Hmmmm....

Not too promising.

[LudwigPastorius]

6. Looks like the same problem as the last crash.

One of the engines didn't re-ignite.

I'd say it's because of frozen fuel lines, but they were having that problem 8 years ago, so you'd think they would already have a solution to that.

[lagomorph777]

13. Yup. I think the SN8 failure was traced to sloshing fuel or something similar.

The engine on the previous flight was sucking in only oxygen, and burned out in a vivid green flame.

[Worried2020]

8. I'm curious as to why they don't try to land in the oceans,

.
.

like almost all the other trips into space did?



W

[HariSeldon]

9. No oceans to land in on the moon or Mars nt

[Worried2020]

16. ah

.
.







W

[EarthFirst]

10. A mere ' rapid unscheduled disassembly'

They’ll nail it soon enough...

[SKKY]

20. "...rapid unscheduled disassembly." That's a very geeky way of saying...

..."Shit just starting falling apart."

[Harker]

11. They're fortunate that 9 didn't take out 10. n/t

[lagomorph777]

14. Yeah!

[Steelrolled]

19. "up to 100 Starship crafts every year, each capable of carrying up to 100 people."

... this is one of those times when you don't want to do the math.

[brooklynite]

22. "Well, back to the old Drawing Board..."