Starship Launch this AM
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Rocket Explodes on Kamala's Watch
Andrew Stiles
April 20, 2023What happened: Vice President Kamala Harris assumed command of the National Space Council in May 2021. Nearly two years later, a SpaceX next-generation Starship exploded during a test flight over Texas.
Why it matters: It's another space-related scandal for Harris, who in 2022 presided over several launch delays involving the Artemis 1, a massive new rocket NASA hopes will one day carry humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. The SpaceX Starship is also being developed with that goal in mind.
Connecting the dots: SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell has served on the National Space Council's User Advisory Group since December 2022, when Harris formally invited her to join.
Big picture: Harris has shown little desire to take on any real responsibility as vice president. Her first assigned task—managing the immigration crisis—did not go well.
Chairing the space council must have seemed like an easy gig. Alas, Harris has managed to bungle that as well. In one of her first official acts as space council chair, Harris hired a bunch of child actors and forced them to listen to her wax maniacally about the wonders of space.
Bigger picture: Most Americans are (justifiably) terrified at the thought of Harris becoming president.
Context: President Joe Biden is 80 years old.
@George-K said in Starship Launch this AM:
Rocket Explodes on Kamala's Watch
Andrew Stiles
April 20, 2023What happened: Vice President Kamala Harris assumed command of the National Space Council in May 2021. Nearly two years later, a SpaceX next-generation Starship exploded during a test flight over Texas.
Why it matters: It's another space-related scandal for Harris, who in 2022 presided over several launch delays involving the Artemis 1, a massive new rocket NASA hopes will one day carry humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. The SpaceX Starship is also being developed with that goal in mind.
Connecting the dots: SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell has served on the National Space Council's User Advisory Group since December 2022, when Harris formally invited her to join.
Big picture: Harris has shown little desire to take on any real responsibility as vice president. Her first assigned task—managing the immigration crisis—did not go well.
Chairing the space council must have seemed like an easy gig. Alas, Harris has managed to bungle that as well. In one of her first official acts as space council chair, Harris hired a bunch of child actors and forced them to listen to her wax maniacally about the wonders of space.
Bigger picture: Most Americans are (justifiably) terrified at the thought of Harris becoming president.
Context: President Joe Biden is 80 years old.
lolz
I actually thought it was the Bee or the Onion, and it turns out it isn't even a satire site.
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@George-K said in Starship Launch this AM:
Rocket Explodes on Kamala's Watch
Andrew Stiles
April 20, 2023What happened: Vice President Kamala Harris assumed command of the National Space Council in May 2021. Nearly two years later, a SpaceX next-generation Starship exploded during a test flight over Texas.
Why it matters: It's another space-related scandal for Harris, who in 2022 presided over several launch delays involving the Artemis 1, a massive new rocket NASA hopes will one day carry humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. The SpaceX Starship is also being developed with that goal in mind.
Connecting the dots: SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell has served on the National Space Council's User Advisory Group since December 2022, when Harris formally invited her to join.
Big picture: Harris has shown little desire to take on any real responsibility as vice president. Her first assigned task—managing the immigration crisis—did not go well.
Chairing the space council must have seemed like an easy gig. Alas, Harris has managed to bungle that as well. In one of her first official acts as space council chair, Harris hired a bunch of child actors and forced them to listen to her wax maniacally about the wonders of space.
Bigger picture: Most Americans are (justifiably) terrified at the thought of Harris becoming president.
Context: President Joe Biden is 80 years old.
lolz
I actually thought it was the Bee or the Onion, and it turns out it isn't even a satire site.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Starship Launch this AM:
I actually thought it was the Bee or the Onion
He's got that Axios vibe down, doesn't he?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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1st and 2nd stages never separated.
ETA: During the live broadcast, they had a graphic showing the Raptor engines on the bottom of the 1st stage - 39 I believe. Shortly after launch, you could see that 3 or 4 were not functioning. They claim this has no effect of flight capability, but I wonder if there was some kind of cascade of failures involved.
@George-K said in Starship Launch this AM:
some kind of cascade of failures involved
Remember this one on the Saturn V?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_oscillation
The second stage of Apollo 13 lost an engine (1 of 5) in the second stage if I remember correctly. No big deal, just burn the other 4 longer.
Rockets blow up.
We had the same problems with ships sailing over the edge of the earth looking for China. Eventually they got it worked out.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Starship Launch this AM:
I actually thought it was the Bee or the Onion
He's got that Axios vibe down, doesn't he?
@George-K said in Starship Launch this AM:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Starship Launch this AM:
I actually thought it was the Bee or the Onion
He's got that Axios vibe down, doesn't he?
This was his other article today:
Today is April 20, sometimes referred to as "4/20," defined by Wikipedia as "an international counterculture holiday based on the celebration and consumption of cannabis."
To honor the occasion, we are reminiscing about the time President Barack H. Obama—former member of the "Choom Gang," a Honolulu-based marijuana syndicate—voted for himself at precisely 4:20 p.m. local time in Chicago on October 25, 2012.
This historic moment will echo in eternity thanks to the Washington Free Beacon's unrivaled journalistic and social media prowess. "Choom Gang commander in chief votes for self at precisely 4:20," the official Free Beacon Twitter account observed at 5:21 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Obama, who also admitted using cocaine and eating dog meat, was the first sitting president to vote early in a national election. He was required to provide photo identification to vote.
Again, I can't figure out whether it's satire. It sounds a lot like the old Colbert Report used to.
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@George-K said in Starship Launch this AM:
some kind of cascade of failures involved
Remember this one on the Saturn V?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_oscillation
The second stage of Apollo 13 lost an engine (1 of 5) in the second stage if I remember correctly. No big deal, just burn the other 4 longer.
Rockets blow up.
We had the same problems with ships sailing over the edge of the earth looking for China. Eventually they got it worked out.
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I'm seeing lots of speculation that the launch pad's design was faulty. The base of the rocket was much too close to the pad, given the thrust of the engines, ensuring the scattering of debris (as was seen) with the potential for that debris to damage Starship.
Musk claims they might be ready to go again in a month.
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Successful launch and successful "staging" pushing the second stage away from the Superheavy booster which experienced a Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
Signal with second stage was lost about two minutes later. Presumably, it's lost.
Link to video -
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According to Musk, the explosion took place because SpaceX had to vent excess oxygen out of the ship. Testing new rockets typically sees companies use a mass simulator for a payload to simulate flight conditions, and Musk added that the explosion could have been avoided had SpaceX used an actual payload for orbital delivery.
Musk revealed the reason behind the anomaly in SpaceX's company talked. A little over a third of the talk shared by SpaceX on its X page covered Starship. SpaceX's future depends on Starship since not only is the rocket essential for the firm to build out its Starlink internet satellite constellation, but it will also conduct lunar missions for NASA and eventual crewed Mars flights.
SpaceX's latest Starship test took place in December, and while it saw the rocket successfully lift off and complete stage separation, the rest of the test saw both the first and second stages explode at different times and far away from each other.
Musk shared details about the second stage's explosion, revealing that the cause of the anomaly was SpaceX itself. He outlined that during liftoff, SpaceX had fully filled the Starship's second stage with liquid oxygen and methane. Once the firm tried to vent this oxygen during flight, the Starship's second stage exploded, explained the executive.
According to Musk:
So, flight 2 actually almost made it to orbit. So, in fact, ironically if it had a payload, it would have made it to orbit because the reason that it actually didn't quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen. And the liquid oxygen [inaudible] led to fire and an explosion, because we wanted to vent the liquid oxygen because we normally wouldn't have that liquid oxygen if we had a payload. So, ironically, if it had a payload, it would have reached orbit. And so I think we've got a really got shot of reaching orbit with flight 3, and then a rapid cadence to achieve full and rapid reusablity.
Flying Starship's second stage with the weight to represent a payload was necessary for SpaceX's December second Starship test flight since it had to test the correct thrust specifications for lift-off and stage separation. A lighter rocket requires less power whenever engines are involved. For test launches, depending on the objectives, it has to match flight specifications to ensure performance at the correct requirements.
