Is it confirmed they used the Flight Termination System? That thing exploded way more than the previous explodeds...

Wonder where it all landed. Should be a mess when fog clears.

Yeah... pretty sure this was a middle finger to the FAA. Oh you need to see it launch? ok.. LAUNCH IN THE FOG!


Yeah... Pretty sure the FAA is going to try to go in dry now...

How much you want to bet they don't fly in fog any more? Can't get a lot of visual data if you can't see it. AND it looks like the cameras on board were having issues as well.

NASASpaceflight guys are saying their remote control camera got hit by the shrapnel. Debris field is going to be pretty big.

The feed posted said no more data received, data is gone. Just gone.

I wanna buy some raptor engines now, and do things.

NASASpaceflight working on getting the footage uploaded of their camera getting hit. They are laughing about it.

*sigh*

Not good. I'm not sure we'll see SN15 for a looooong time if this was a mid-air RUD (which it sure seems to be). FAA gonna go in dry and angry. As much as I want this thing to fly, they should've waited. I'm wondering if maybe the fog impeded the landing guidance system and she went way off course...

Tim Dodd(everyday astronaut) saying they may have lost uo to 20k in camera gear.

And the FAA needs to go suck a cactus.... even with a FTS, they planned for it..

I don't think the guidance is visual. The problem with the fog is you don't get video footage of what happened.

Just strange all around. How quick do you think for SN15

Ag_of_08 said:

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Tim Dodd(everyday astronaut) saying they may have lost uo to 20k in camera gear.

And the FAA needs to go suck a cactus.... even with a FTS, they planned for it..

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Totally agree with ya, bud, but we all know what's coming. Elon 'bout to get a political whackin'.

Oh I'm sure they'll be trying.

It was going to be a month or so before they did anything beyond the pathfinders anyway, im sure the battle will be epic.

Cactus Jack said:

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I don't think the guidance is visual. The problem with the fog is you don't get video footage of what happened.

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I don't think it is, either, I'm just throwing ideas on the wall as to what could have resulted in an activation of the FTS that close to ground.

NASASpaceflight just showed a replay with shrapnel flying all over the facility. One of their cameras took a hit. Debris landing all over the place.

There's a lot we don't know right now, but I think the data will be interesting as they release it, and I think they do have a lot of it. No, the guidance system is definitely not visual. The telemetry stream is pretty lengthy and the visuals/onboard cameras are the easiest part to 'lose' as they require a ton of data/continuously received.

Cactus Jack said:

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NASASpaceflight just showed a replay with shrapnel flying all over the facility. One of their cameras took a hit. Debris landing all over the place.

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Holy hell that was awesome!

ETA Cactus beat me...stupid Twitter link was messin' with me.

I am here at SPI.

Couldn't see a damn thing but could hear it all.

Definitely was a weird pop on reigniting before the landing.

Wow. Not a good day for SpaceX. Probably the nail in the coffin for their Human Landing System bid.

No way.

The first real question I have, well, now that we know starhopper is ok, is whether it was a manual termination or if it auto-destructed itself.

Next question, as Elon referred above, is what happened with the relight this time? I think they were planning to light all 3 but why do they struggle so much with these raptors right now (changing them out, failure during static fires, repeated issues on relight obviously, failure to throttle to commands etc.)?

This is a very exotic/advanced engine, early in it's flight development yes, but I'd assume they have done a lot of firings on the ground and have made quite a few of these yet they seem highly unreliable.

I really hope the debris is limited to the areas they told the FAA it might be. Also, we criticize the landing etc. but the starships have come closer to landing, and a whole lot more flight time, than the ridiculous SLS has!

Don't know why they insisted on launching in that visibility. Lost a tremendous amount of visual data for the test. Very disappointing.

So... did spacex scrub some audio out of the feed?

I thought i heard some talking right after the boom... Now there is a long period of silence before he comes back and says they're going to end the livestream.

NavyAg95 said:

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Wow. Not a good day for SpaceX. Probably the nail in the coffin for their Human Landing System bid.

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Show me who else is making progress on live rocket development and testing...

The SpaceX's bid is predicated on Starship working. NASA will go with the traditional/proven technology approach. Just too much risk for the time frame we are trying to achieve.

NavyAg95 said:

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Don't know why they insisted on launching in that visibility. Lost a tremendous amount of visual data for the test. Very disappointing.

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I don't know what they really lost? I mean, we like watching it, but they know what the data said the engines were doing and that's really all that matters, not what it looked like. And, they probably have a lot more visual data; they had cameras inside the tanks/on the ship etc., and while some of that glitched out on the livestream I bet they have a very good visual idea of what was happening from that data they can stitch together too from...onboard cameras which are a lot better than the commercial guys on the ground.

As well, they have had great/very high resolution/frame rate cameras on the pad so they probably have that too but aren't real likely to show it off this morning. It failed to pivot from the belly flop, but more cameras on it from the ground wouldn't, in short, really tell us much.

Brad06ag said:

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So... did spacex scrub some audio out of the feed?

I thought i heard some talking right after the boom... Now there is a long period of silence before he comes back and says they're going to end the livestream.

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SpaceX is very tight on their livestreams. Elon's criticized it in the past, in fact. They don't show much when things go wrong.

Nothing stopping them from continuing development on their own. They received far less funding than the other groups.

It is pretty much a foregone conclusion that the BO/Lockheed/Northrop Grumman bid is going to win. Way too much lobbying clout in DC and way too many people in Congress with their hands in the cookie jar for them not to win.

Don't get me wrong. I'm a huge fan. I think their approach is the right one for the future but they have a lot of developmental hurdles to get through before this is a viable and reliable system. NASA's Artimis program will go forth utilizing proven but more expensive technology.

NavyAg95 said:

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The SpaceX's bid is predicated on Starship working. NASA will go with the traditional/proven technology approach. Just too much risk for the time frame we are trying to achieve.

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Somewhat. Moonship is however not to use the belly flop at all. It's questionable if it would even use a raptor to slow for a moon landing or something else. I don't think for a second this helps their bid though, and in reality I'd handicap their odds at an award (note that congress gave less than half what was requested this year) at under 20 percent.

Dynetics would be what I would write the check for if I were Mr. John Q Taxpayer HMFIC.