The SpaceX Thread
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This would be a shift from "including the plumbing" to "including the plumbing"? Eg,
It's not a goalpost shift when the supposed shifted position can be shown to exist in a substantial and well-attested way prior to the alleged shift. You might consider it a shift if you didn't notice/remember me saying this, but that doesn't mean that's what I did.
Well, I can search for the word "leak" on the linked page, so for the most recent failure I followed it to its citation, which was an Ars Technica article, which ultimately links back to a Musk tweet.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130
For flight 2, the citation goes to https://www.spacex.com/updates/
Does not appear to be possible to link to a specific post, but that states: "A leak in the aft section of the spacecraft that developed when the liquid oxygen vent was initiated resulted in a combustion event and subsequent fires that led to a loss of communication between the spacecraft’s flight computers."
As primary sources I'm assuming an official SpaceX post and a tweet directly from Musk will suffice?
Does not specify source so you cant really say if thats relevant. Leaks from the engine dont support your original claim
Still a stretch. A venting system is quite secondary to the most critical bits of a rocket. If the leak only started after then vent was commanded that really points toward an issue on the low pressure side of that system. An analogy would be a leaking muffler; we wouldn't claim its anything to do with the compression ratio of an ICE engine.
That is to say perhaps they set some margins too thin or did a poor job of testing that system but its nothing fundamentally related to tank quality or the pressures therein.
Apparently you can! Thanks for demonstrating that capability.
You might keep that in mind for future claims.
Sure, it suffices to show that your claim of a tank leak is... Let's be generous and say "completely unsupported by your citation."
Appreciate all your hard work at demonstrating that your claim was completely unsupported by your own sources.
Bullshit.
At least you've shown elsewhere that you know how citations work.
Try some more of that.
OK, what's the actual contention here? Whether or not there was a leak? Yeah, there was a leak, obviously, I don't know how that could be controversial at this point.
Whether that has anything to do with the earlier leak issues or what specific bit of metal leaked is kind of unknowable unless SpX volunteers that information, and even then we're talking about a design with thin safety margins designed to show capability rather than competency, so stuff is bound to break all over. In terms popular on this forum: we're at a low TRL here.
Whether that has anything to do with the earlier leak issues or what specific bit of metal leaked is kind of unknowable unless SpX volunteers that information, and even then we're talking about a design with thin safety margins designed to show capability rather than competency, so stuff is bound to break all over. In terms popular on this forum: we're at a low TRL here.
Oh, the point of contention is that @Megalodon was claiming the Starship tank pressures are way too high to be safe and will cause long-term reliability problems.
I find his level of concern about ~100psi tank pressures as a failure of design parameters to be... less than credible.
/// OFFICIAL MODERATION NOTICE ///
I have no idea what you hoped to achieve with this, but knock it off. Next one is a break
Just a correction,
You are grossely wrong on the nuclear plant pressure vessel. It is over a order of magnitude higher.
The part of a nuclear plant that is measured in feet and has a pressure limit a third of your statement is the containment building.
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This is in reference to a COPV hydrogen tank, which is rated to 10,000 psi. I wasn't able to find any RPVs rated to that, let alone 100,000 psi. I suspect this is a misunderstanding in what I was referring to, but if there's really RPVs rated to 10,000-100,000 psi I would be very interested to hear more about that.
Pressurized water reactors have a normal operating pressure of ~2200 psi.
Your post that I replied to was a reply to Tom, who stated "Starship tank pressure is ~100psi" and which you had directly replied, not contradicting him but stating, in reference to what he said (damn, I wish Ars hadn't killed multi-level quotes) that "Show me a tank rated for that pressure with the diameter of Starship. Closest you'll get is a nuclear reactor pressure vessel".
You, in that chain of quotes are speaking about 100 Psi tanks. To shift the goal posts to talk about a different tank at a different pressure is poor debating. Welcome to the number 3 spot on my ignore list.
I think most people would understand that nuclear reactors are not rated for less than 33 PSI (less than a garden hose) and instead "that" referred to the much more reasonable number in the same the paragraph.
I dont think you are being completely fair there. In context he was replying to the part about a 10K automotive tank when he brought that up
Of course I would be more curious how 100 PSI compares to tank pressure of other launch systems
This page suggests Saturn V was around 25 PSI (on a 10m diameter)
https://www.enginehistory.org/Rockets/RPE08.10/RPE08.10.shtml
At less than a half order of magnitude increase, better materials, and with much more efficient engines they should have sufficient mass budget for that to be reliable.
So now that he is publically doing NAZI salutes, is it even ethical to like what spacex is doing anymore?
Not trying to just troll, but we don't extol nazi germany's work in rocketry/space flight even though they were the pioneers, and the basis for both the US and Soviet space program. Rockets are cool, but everything spacex is always about musk, and he's pretty openly nazi at this point. How can we talk about starship when fascism and nazis are utterly unavoidable now.
Not trying to just troll, but we don't extol nazi germany's work in rocketry/space flight even though they were the pioneers, and the basis for both the US and Soviet space program. Rockets are cool, but everything spacex is always about musk, and he's pretty openly nazi at this point. How can we talk about starship when fascism and nazis are utterly unavoidable now.
/// OFFICIAL MODERATION NOTICE ///
Look, here in the Observatory we focus on the science and engineering. I think we all agree that Elon is ultimately a sad broken man in desperate need of constant attention and approval, BUT that is a.) no where near my specialty or background and b.) not germane to the Observatory.
We've talked and celebrated the achievements of the launch industry as a whole and I know I personally cheer and celebrate the US space program and the early days of the space race and Apollo Program, all while being fully well aware of the nature of Operation Paperclip and the background of the people who led the technical side of things (as well as the bigotry of many of the administrators in the early days of NASA).
If people want to discuss what a broken man Mr Musk is, there are multiple threads in the SoapBox where they can do just that:
When did America stop dreaming big? On colonizing/exploring Mars and hating on Musk
The Twitter Follies
I am sure that other opportunities to discuss him will come up in the weekly current events thread or in other threads. That said, you can discuss his crap there, but there is no reason we cannot discuss space flight and SpaceX's technical achievements more specifically here. Just like we can all discuss NASA here.
If I remember correctly, they do at least do pressure tests on each individual Starship over at Massey's before they install engines and prepare to launch it, so that should catch defective welds. That points to it being more likely, as others here have said, that the SpaceX reported leaks are coming from engines, which IIRC don't get installed until after the pressure tests.
Musk has even complained about engine flanges being issues for leaks, and that is likely to be one of many reasons for the V3 engine design which has a lot less flanges and fittings. Having to cut an engine apart to repair it may be a small price to pay (with cheap engines) compared to leaks with an engine with many flanges and fittings running at some of the highest pressures of any known rocket engine.
But the vehicles are then rolled back and static fired, so a problematic engine or engine connection can be found then.
This doesn't mitigate against leaks developing from stress or vibration in launch, however. There's only so much they can do on the ground prior to launch, but each failure in flight, if they can diagnose it, informs corrections and tweaks for going forward.
Really long static fire for Ship 34. 50sec+. Superheavy was done a few days back.
View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=z2ExgpezyuE&lc=UgzeAkZ8g76k701xpDR4AaABAg&si=x3ummU9-HrNVWiXT
Looks like SpaceX figured out the flight 7 RUD and making sure as much as possible it doesn't happen again. After this detailed inspections and rework if necessary, then full stack.
I guess they are expecting an early March launch.
View: https://youtube.com/watch?v=z2ExgpezyuE&lc=UgzeAkZ8g76k701xpDR4AaABAg&si=x3ummU9-HrNVWiXT
Looks like SpaceX figured out the flight 7 RUD and making sure as much as possible it doesn't happen again. After this detailed inspections and rework if necessary, then full stack.
I guess they are expecting an early March launch.
Bro, not gonna watch a two hour video to get 50 seconds of static fire.
Starship flight 8 pushed to Monday, 3 Mar 530 PM local/2330 UTC
https://www.space.com/space-explora...ys-flight-8-of-starship-megarocket-to-march-3
https://www.space.com/space-explora...ys-flight-8-of-starship-megarocket-to-march-3
spacex just lost a booster on its 5th launch. Had a fire and blew up:
https://www.space.com/space-explora...on-9-launch-loses-booster-after-landing-video
That decrease in QA and quality is really starting to show.
https://www.space.com/space-explora...on-9-launch-loses-booster-after-landing-video
That decrease in QA and quality is really starting to show.
They still have a better record than anyone else in rocket history by a wide margin. Losing a booster here and there is to be expected, since they keep pushing them until they fail to find their limits.
If you're going to cast shade, at least be fully truthful about it.
There was a fire in the engine bay that damaged a leg, which subsequently caused it to tip over.
I didn't mean to imply the mission failed, because obviously it didn't. However how is saying a booster had a fire and blew up "casting shade"? Thats literally what happened.
Ah yeah a loss on landing is not a big deal. It sounded like it was a loss on launch, which is a huge deal.
When legs fail, which has happened, the vehicle body falls over, breaks open and the residual fuel deflagrates.
With rockets, "blowing up" generally means an explosion with pieces being scattered over a wide area. I can't look at the video you linked, but if there was a fire after landing, then any explosion was very low-yield as the boosters land with just about no fuel or oxidier remaining.
As Skoop just said, this was probably not an explosion, but a deflagration. Yes, we're being pendants on a topic explicitly about rockets. Words are important.
Now you are debating "how fast was the fire", so can we say words that don't make spacex fans as uneasy? It doesn't matter how it happened, because crap happens to everyone. The pertinent point is how MANY things have been happening in the last year to falcon 9 hardware. THAT is the concerning story.
Note - pointing out all the problems falcon9 has had in the last year isn't "hating spacex", and I think its a little cultish for people to assume it is. However falcon 9s have had alot more publicly known issues in the last 12 months than the last several years combined. Why is that happening?
There aren't enough datapoints to be more than noise. Even with F9's launch cadence, it's still not many launches for statistical purposes. If they continue to lose more and more boosters than it will be a problem, but as of now, meh.
Current NET for Flight8 is now 5:45pm CT.
SpaceX is living on Twitter.
SpaceNews rebroadcast on Youtube.
The ususal suspects (NSF, LabPadre, SpaceflightNow, EverydayAstronaut) are all live as well.
SpaceX is living on Twitter.
SpaceNews rebroadcast on Youtube.
The ususal suspects (NSF, LabPadre, SpaceflightNow, EverydayAstronaut) are all live as well.
It's not as big a deal but it's still a loss. They wouldn't bother trying to catch them if it wasn't.
Has anyone heard anything recently about the "water runoff from Starship launches is contaminating the local environment/wetlands" issue? I read that the lawsuit about that was dropped, but I just wonder what, if anything, SpaceX is doing to address those concerns.
I admit, I'm rather late asking this question (haven't logged into Ars in a while), and hopefully this thread is the right place for it. The thing is, someone I was talking to about Starship a few months ago, the day they caught the Super Heavy booster on the tower for the first time, kinda got in my face about the issue, and I would love to have some answers. (Not that I can talk to very many people about Starship nowadays, but still.)
I admit, I'm rather late asking this question (haven't logged into Ars in a while), and hopefully this thread is the right place for it. The thing is, someone I was talking to about Starship a few months ago, the day they caught the Super Heavy booster on the tower for the first time, kinda got in my face about the issue, and I would love to have some answers. (Not that I can talk to very many people about Starship nowadays, but still.)
The new permit was approved. There were never actually any findings of contamination