bthotugigem05 said:

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

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This reminds me of that Jodie Foster movie, "Contact."

TexAgs91 said:

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From my drone at Isla Blanca

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From your video, the gimbled rockets seem to always be off center from the trajectory of the rocket. And it doesn't seem to be a small amount. Like the rocket was trying to pitch down(to the left in the video) and the gimbled engines were gimbled down toward the ground to keep it from "falling over".

My description might be totally non-coherent. But I am an IT guy, not a aero guy. lol

Just seems like the engines were fighting the rocket the whole way. Not to mention the thrust by my earlier posts seems less than needed.

I would be interested what kind of electric actuators would be used. I design and sell both hydraulic and electric systems and both have their pros/cons. For hydraulic it is the ability to dampen movement and vibrations better, most electric don't have this ability and if they do they wear out a lot faster. That is why most aircraft (planes and helicopters) still use hydraulics for applications like tilt

Been watching the NSF feed.

They had a shot at launch of concrete bouncing up and taking out two of the engines before it even launched.

And the whole stack tilted in that direction, leading to it lifting off at an angle instead of vertical. I think if they didn't have those gimbaled engines, it might have fallen over on the pad.

You can see it tilt and then straight back up a few seconds after liftoff as the engines reacted.

SpaceX team seems to be pretty happy (and rightfully so)

Some have sporting events..we have launches 🚀 pic.twitter.com/IV7IxoVTXB

— Jessie Anderson (@whoisheartbreak) April 20, 2023

Does anyone know if there are road closures, and for how long you're wanting to drive to Starbase or near the beach where the launch happened?

Teslag said:

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

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To laugh at their dishonesty in covering topics that one is familiar with, and yet trust their take on all other topics is a truly remarkable behavior.

I heard it described as shaking ones head when reading the paper and then immediately resetting to a gullible rube when the page is turned.

I think the road will be closed for a while longer while they survey the debris. My launch photog buddies are waiting to be told when they'll be able to go get what's left of their remote cameras, was supposed to be 4 hours after launch.

Excuse the language. Great capture of whatever anomaly occurred at T+30.

the moment when my heart raced and I said to myself "fuck, it's not gonna make it to Max-Q". pic.twitter.com/4hph1KiwVe

— Alex Svan (@AlexSvanArt) April 20, 2023

will25u said:

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TexAgs91 said:

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From my drone at Isla Blanca

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From your video, the gimbled rockets seem to always be off center from the trajectory of the rocket. And it doesn't seem to be a small amount. Like the rocket was trying to pitch down(to the left in the video) and the gimbled engines were gimbled down toward the ground to keep it from "falling over".

My description might be totally non-coherent. But I am an IT guy, not a aero guy. lol

Just seems like the engines were fighting the rocket the whole way. Not to mention the thrust by my earlier posts seems less than needed.

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They were worried about an ad Astra sideways exit lol

Roads will be closed for awhile, SpaceX and emergency personnel haven't gone to the site yet to check on the damaged storage tanks and debris damage

FTAG 2000 said:

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Got the mountains of Monterrey in the background and everything!

RED AG 98 said:

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Excuse the language. Great capture of whatever anomaly occurred at T+30.

the moment when my heart raced and I said to myself "fuck, it's not gonna make it to Max-Q". pic.twitter.com/4hph1KiwVe

— Alex Svan (@AlexSvanArt) April 20, 2023

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I thought "maybe that's just the camera shaking", but it looked wobbly staying together the whole time, then when it starts doing loopty loops the guy on Fox was like "that's interesting, look at it doing maneuvers".

Just got off a call so haven't had any volume on the NSF steam. Is this tank damage new?
And now they're showing hopper and it looks to have come out ok but it took a beating

Muy said:

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RED AG 98 said:

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Excuse the language. Great capture of whatever anomaly occurred at T+30.

the moment when my heart raced and I said to myself "fuck, it's not gonna make it to Max-Q". pic.twitter.com/4hph1KiwVe

— Alex Svan (@AlexSvanArt) April 20, 2023

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I thought "maybe that's just the camera shaking", but it looked wobbly staying together the whole time, then when it starts doing loopty loops the guy on Fox was like "that's interesting, look at it doing maneuvers".

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The initial loop was planned and part of the separation sequence

RED AG 98 said:

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Just got off a call so haven't had any volume on the NSF steam. Is this tank damage new?
And now they're showing hopper and it looks to have come out ok but it took a beating

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That's new. Something big hit those two tanks.

Yeah the amount of force there to make something of this size wobble as it appeared to is just incredible

FireAg said:

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aezmvp said:

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FireAg said:

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At least 3 engines didn't light...

At least 2 more flamed out on ascent...

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3 didn't light. 4th failed T+0:40, 5th at T+1:01, 6th at T+1:40 but comes back at T+1:52, They were all except 1 interior on one side of the rocket which probably didn't help. But it lifted off, cleared the pad, it looks like the tower works, made it to max Q. That's a lot of major steps forward.

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I get it's a test flight, and I hope they achieved their goals with this, but if it is deemed a "success", it will be done merely on the basis that the bird got off the ground...

My hunch is the SpaceX engineers feel bittersweet right now...

I'm a veteran flight controller of over 30 Shuttle missions and 15 ISS expeditions at JSC...I lost two colleagues and friends on Columbia... Spaceflight is a risky business, and it's gut-wrenching for me to watch these things and them not be pristine... I get it, but it is still very hard... The public needs to be prepared for commercial spaceflight to cause some spectacular deaths on live TV during its infancy... Not a question of if, but when, unfortunately...

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Do you know a current MC with the initials E.T.? She is basically my wife's best friend. Pretty awesome gig!

"rapid unscheduled disassembly"

tk for tu juan said:

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For the people near the launch, how loud was it?

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It was a low rumble that kept building to where it maxed out about a minute after launch.

We were about 5.1 miles away.

So loud yes but not terrible.

Just gorgeous. We lost it into a cloud bank for a bit after about the 50 second mark.

The raptors burning out actually helped us see it in the clouds.

NSF feed recapping the launch said on SpaceX data there was a rapid loss of LOX right at launch. They were able to stop it by shutting a valve.

Guessing the concrete bounced up, took out raptors, and created an opening for LOX to leak out rapidly.

Crazy stuff.

GCRanger said:

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How far down range was it when RUD? It looked like it got to about 32km altitude and 2100km/h before RUD.

EA had sand rain down on them at their filming location 5 miles away about 10 minutes after liftoff.

That was super exciting. Great launch and test today.

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Yeah we had the same sand raining down on us as we drove away.

That was a little bit freaky but cool.

Max-Q was scheduled to be around 0:55, Max-Q callout was around 1:20 with the reduced thrust

https://www.tmahlmann.com/photos/Rockets/SpaceX/Orbital-Starship/i-tvvWWpb/

At least SpaceX has been open about what went wrong for stuff like this in the past.

This shot is absolute flames

Starship: Pointy end down, flamey end up! pic.twitter.com/oy5qs2eNKL

— John Kraus (@johnkrausphotos) April 20, 2023

A couple more launches like this and that flame trench should be dug all out.

FTAG 2000 said:

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Star Hopper 100 yards from the pad.

Wonder if there's anything left.

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I never understood why they kept Star Hopper right there. I know they loved their comparison pictures, but move that damn thing back to the build site.

Will be interesting to see what they say about the S0 damage. It looks to be pretty significant and that might be more of an issue for another 2023 launch than Starship itself.

On the innermost ring where the raptor is out - is it just me or is that orange flames there? Was the bottom of the booster on fire?

It is now a part time water tank

Looking at the video of the Astra like side slide they were really lucky it slid sideways instead of backwards into the tower. It was a massive horizontal translation. Easily 2-3 full widths of the booster itself.

FTAG 2000 said:

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On the innermost ring where the raptor is out - is it just me or is that orange flames there? Was the bottom of the booster on fire?

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My guess would be some incomplete combustion of residual methane with the LOx shut off.

What... 6 raptors off here?

FTAG 2000 said:

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That must be from the "Rocket Ranch" place - they are close!

I watched the SpaceX and NSF feeds live this morning. Just went back and re-watched the EA feed from just a few minutes before launch.

So about 3 minutes after RUD they heard the boom. And then about 3 minutes later as they were on the porch they started getting dust and debris rained on them. Absolutely wild.