Big rockets equal a lot of force to launch, but I had no idea it would be that much. Wonder if they had any idea the launch pad would be destroyed to this extent

bthotugigem05 said:

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The concrete pad is just…gone. That's the foundation of the OLM.

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Wow. I guess we know what 30 raptors at full thrust will do now.

Honestly they are lucky the concrete chunks didn't severely damage the booster. Glad to see the launch mount survived.

I wonder what kind of damage was done to the tank farm.

Excuse my ignorance: how does spaceX make money to afford blowing up a rocket

Ag87H2O said:

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bthotugigem05 said:

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The concrete pad is just…gone. That's the foundation of the OLM.

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Wow. I guess we know what 30 raptors at full thrust will do now.

Honestly they are lucky the concrete chunks didn't severely damage the booster. Glad to see the launch mount survived.

I wonder what kind of damage was done to the tank farm.

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I think we are going to find the concrete chunks are the reason the raptors failed and cascaded into the lack of stage separation.

Aggie_2463 said:

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Excuse my ignorance: how does spaceX make money to afford blowing up a rocket

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Tesla profits, Starlink profits, and fed grants.

ABATTBQ11 said:

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Aggie_2463 said:

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Excuse my ignorance: how does spaceX make money to afford blowing up a rocket

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Falcon 9 has cornered much of the orbital launch market

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Probably a bit more important on the revenue front than Starlink at this point.

Taking the pollyanna view, I think the lack of deluge system and extra time spent at full thrust before liftoff (6-8 seconds) plus the lack of the sturdier concrete meant this probably wasn't an unforeseen result.

My launch photography buddies are very pessimistic about their cameras surviving, much less getting any good shots because of the dust plume.

NSF feed just showed a closer photo of their van hit by debris

Aggie_2463 said:

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Excuse my ignorance: how does spaceX make money to afford blowing up a rocket

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Falcon 9 successfully launches multiple times per week, and its dramatically cheaper to use SpaceX than any other company out there. If you want to put a new satellite out in space, there's pretty much only one game in town now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Falcon_9_and_Falcon_Heavy_launches

They have the piping for the deluge system on premise, just not installed yet. I'm going to bet that's in place for the next launch.

The several second on the pad at launch thing is going to be a regular occurrence - they don't light all the engines at once, they spool them up in groups.

I'm trying to learn @obspy + @GoogleColab for analyzing this data, and a very useful feature included with ObsPy is triggers. The trigger activates at 563 seconds and deactivates at 592 seconds, putting our 580 second estimate right in the middle. 3/3 pic.twitter.com/mgF2ey9o1P

— Amelia Smith (@ameliairheart) April 20, 2023

bthotugigem05 said:

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FireAg said:

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I hear you...I have different experiences...

It's all fun and games until they blow up humans onboard...and that is going to happen...nature of the biz...

Doesn't mean they should stop what they are doing, but there will be a real, human loss at some point, and that's gut-wrenching to me...

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To give you perspective, SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which has safely launched 30 astronauts to orbit since 2020, went through 20 operational flights without humans before putting humans in the seat and lighting the candle.

NASA's Orion capsule has gone through 1 integrated test flight on SLS before NASA is putting astronauts on it for Artemis II.

Not saying there will never be another crew loss, because there will be, but I encourage you not to look at SpaceX's design philosophy and their acceptance of things blowing up and interpret it as not taking safety seriously.

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Please don't think I fault their approach or that they don't take things seriously...not what I'm saying...

Airplanes with thousands upon thousands of commercial flight experience still occasionally fail...it happens...

Having been present for a major spaceflight failure at NASA, it's just different and more spectacular when it happens with spaceflight operations (as opposed to commercial aircraft)...

It's human nature for a spaceflight failure to get more attention and scrutiny, and to be able to weather that attention and scrutiny successfully isn't an easy task...

Spaceflight ain't like dusting crops (to poorly quote Han Solo)...

AustinAg2K said:

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One thing I love about SpaceX is their ability to cheer on a failure. If this had happened at NASA, people would be freaking out, and it would shut down the program from the next six years. At SpaceX, everyone is pumped at having a massive explosion. They really have the right attitude to make amazing things happen. At NASA, they don't allow any sort of failure at all, even if it's unmanned.

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Very much this. The philosophical differences between fast failing in an iterative design process and the first time right waterfall methodology cannot be understated. They are completely different ways of thinking and working and importantly measuring success.

Both have their own strengths and weaknesses and sometimes circumstances dictate that it has to be right. It can be a real challenge for folks with deep history in any process to learn to think differently without a massive outside disruption or incentive.

FTAG 2000 said:

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They have the piping for the deluge system on premise, just not installed yet. I'm going to bet that's in place for the next launch.

The several second on the pad at launch thing is going to be a regular occurrence - they don't light all the engines at once, they spool them up in groups.

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True, but everything I read (albeit nothing official) said the spool-up process would be from t-:06 to t-:00

AustinAg2K said:

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One thing I love about SpaceX is their ability to cheer on a failure. If this had happened at NASA, people would be freaking out, and it would shut down the program from the next six years. At SpaceX, everyone is pumped at having a massive explosion. They really have the right attitude to make amazing things happen. At NASA, they don't allow any sort of failure at all, even if it's unmanned.

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That's because NASA is unfortunately a government entity and the moment something out of line happens, the jackass congressmen come butting in and shutting it down/defunding programs.

I'd be very interesting to see the government backlash if, God forbid, we have a Starship with a crew of NASA astronauts and/or civilians that fails.

A quick look around the web shows leftwing media is running with the "OMG lol Musk's rocket blew up in colossal failure" bit.

Yep, I don't fault NASA for developing things the way they did/do since politics are front and center and optics are so important.

SpaceX staying private as long as they have has really helped them push forward.

I'm assuming that pad was reinforced concrete.

I wonder what they're going to have to build the next-gen pad out of to withstand that amount of thrust?

Just a solid plate of steel 100' across and 10' thick?

Wow.

bthotugigem05 said:

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FTAG 2000 said:

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They have the piping for the deluge system on premise, just not installed yet. I'm going to bet that's in place for the next launch.

The several second on the pad at launch thing is going to be a regular occurrence - they don't light all the engines at once, they spool them up in groups.

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True, but everything I read (albeit nothing official) said the spool-up process would be from t-:06 to t-:00

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I hadn't seen that but makes sense.

Interesting, you don't see any flames coming until about T-2.

Same! Kinda turned into somewhat of a "game thread" today with both positive and negative but day-in day-out it's an amazing thread.

Slyfox07 said:

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I'm assuming that pad was reinforced concrete.

I wonder what they're going to have to build the next-gen pad out of to withstand that amount of thrust?

Just a solid plate of steel 100' across and 10' thick?

Wow.

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They had no water diversion setup, like they have at the Cape for the launches (shuttle and others).

That will be an addition that helps.

They really need to trench a diversion canal too for the thrust to have somewhere to go. Of course, looks like the booster did that for them in part today.

Apparently, a hydraulic power unit failed 30 seconds in, meaning much of the inner engines' ability to gimbal might have been…degraded.

At least 1 HPU blew up 30 seconds into the launch(spacex feed). The loss of the raptors ability to gimble would directly relate to the starships ability to maintain control.

— CaptainHindSite (@hind_site) April 20, 2023

A lot of the hydraulic stuff of course was a 'well, we built it, might as well fly it' since the next ones will be electrically actuated/controlled.

What SpaceX did today is literally modern product development. Fail fast to learn how to make things better quickly.

Today was awesome.

FTAG 2000 said:

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Geddy Lee soul patch said:

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VR Cam caught some spectacular footage as #SuperHeavy rocked #SpaceX #Starbase this morning. I am floored at the amount of debris that was ejected. Waiting on Rover 2 damage assessment. Congratulations @elonmusk on pulling this historical launch! pic.twitter.com/6WKEXFqCGN

— LabPadre (@LabPadre) April 20, 2023

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So much debris

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That camera was a good 300-400 yards from the launch pad. For some perspective.

nortex97 said:

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Apparently, a hydraulic power unit failed 30 seconds in, meaning much of the inner engines' ability to gimbal might have been…degraded.

At least 1 HPU blew up 30 seconds into the launch(spacex feed). The loss of the raptors ability to gimble would directly relate to the starships ability to maintain control.

— CaptainHindSite (@hind_site) April 20, 2023

A lot of the hydraulic stuff of course was a 'well, we built it, might as well fly it' since the next ones will be electrically actuated/controlled.

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That lines up with T+30 and seeing something burn through the bottom of the booster.

carl spacklers hat said:

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FTAG 2000 said:

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Geddy Lee soul patch said:

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VR Cam caught some spectacular footage as #SuperHeavy rocked #SpaceX #Starbase this morning. I am floored at the amount of debris that was ejected. Waiting on Rover 2 damage assessment. Congratulations @elonmusk on pulling this historical launch! pic.twitter.com/6WKEXFqCGN

— LabPadre (@LabPadre) April 20, 2023

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So much debris

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That camera was a good 300-400 yards from the launch pad. For some perspective.

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Yep.

I wonder how many dents the tank farm has, and what star hopper looks like.