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Comment by ojnabieoot | Hacker News Reader

Seriously? It's a test flight of an enormous brand new rocket! It exploded! It doesn't matter what the flight plan is or what SpaceX claims is enough clear airspace. Launches of this sort endanger every flight in Texas and several surrounding states. It also endangers many civilians. While the danger can be monitored and controlled to acceptable levels, every single government in the world would want close oversight of this. It would be deeply irresponsible to let SpaceX proceed unhindered with an experimental rocket launch. As a US taxpayer with family in Texas I would be very pissed off if the FAA wasn't enforcing the terms of their test licenses.

... especially when the rocket EXPLODED. This "the government needs to get out of the way of our billionaire spaceship overlords" mentality would be insane even if the launch was an unqualified success.

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The article is devoid of engineering details. There is no way one can tell from this set of information if the FAA is right or wrong, or if SpaceX is right or wrong.

That being said I have a problem with your comment. You are talking about that the rocket exploded as if it was of consequence. You even capitalise it. Why do you think it matters?

Safety of a test is about the process, not the outcome. You might have a bonkers unsafe test and come out lucky. That doesn't mean that the test was a good idea or safe.

Or you might have the worst of luck, a complete explosive failure, and still everyone remains safe because the processes were right.

I don't know if the FAA is right or wrong. I don't know if the processes of SpaceX were safe or unsafe, but I know one thing. From the fact that it "EXPLODED" but hasn't hurt anyone or caused any 3rd party property damage you can't draw any conclusions about the safety.

I am not saying that SpaceX isn't allowed to do dangerous tests. I am saying that a test where a rocket might explode is the kind of thing that the FAA should 100% be involved in and it's ridiculous to pretend otherwise.

Literally every rocket launch can result in the rocket exploding.

You don't see anyone saying that for the 737 Max do you? Just the corrupt FA trying to hold innovation back. Look at Boeing...

Nobody is saying FAA is corrupt or trying to hold innovation back. The problem with 737 MAX is that it's used to transport people. Starship is far from that, and any spat here is just about timeline of development.

Wasn't a big part of the debacle some pretty questionable decisions by FAA as well ?

And the FAA (or similar agency) should be involved with literally every rocket launch! Especially if it's a test!

What exactly is your point here?

Then every single rocket launch should be held to some standards.

> The article is devoid of engineering details. There is no way one can tell from this set of information if the FAA is right or wrong, or if SpaceX is right or wrong.

If this was some kind of engineering magazine, then you could expect in-depth details to the systems in place and mechanisms that failed. But this is a Reuters article, so I don't expect much technical details from it.

Regardless if anyone was harmed or not during an accident like this, standards should be enforced no matter what, if only to prevent the unlucky scenario in the future.

SN8 (the previous test vehicle in this series) did not explode in midair. It launched, climbed slowly to about 10km altitude, and then descended to land.

It remained under control for the entire flight, landed hard, buckled, and broke open. There was a big fireball from spilled propellant, and a few large pieces of debris (likely COPV's - composite-overwrapped pressure vessels containing compressed gasses) were thrown a few hundred meters or so.

A failure of this magnitude was anticipated by the preparations they had made (clearing a large area around the pad, plus safety notifications to keep aircraft and ships out of the area); nobody was endangered.

The vehicle had a flight termination system (self-destruct) which would have fired if it had gone significantly off course before it left the safety zone.

The site is on the Texas coast just north of the Mexican border; if it had EXPLODED in midair, perhaps some debris could have ended up in Mexico, but there is literally no way this could have endangered anything in any other US state.

Can self-destruct systems fail too ?

Sure - everything can fail. Even on older already working Rockets.

It is just very unlikely that both the rocket will fail in such a way that you need the FTS and that the FTS itself will.

You mainly want it for scenarios where you cannot control the rocket at all anymore. In other cases it might be better to have it fall as a chunk into the sea.

The rocket exploding was expected - it just happened much later than usual for a test.

>> ... especially when the rocket EXPLODED.

I don't think the FAA cares about the explosion itself. They care about the safety of flights and the safety of people on the ground as far as flying things falling on them.

We really don't know what the issue was yet.

My best guess is that SpaceX did last minute changes to the rocket, either hardware or software, deviating from the documents submitted to the FAA. This could explain why the FAA only reacts now and would make sense with what Musk said about the procedures not being able to cope with the pace of development they have.

what I have been hearing is that the violation is in regards to a flight termination system not activating. SN8 crashed due to the header tank not having the required pressure to relight the engine. They posted that info really quick, so.. did they know during descent, prior to the landing attempt that it didn't have pressure, or prior to landing-flip? If so, wouldn't a rocket hurtling towards the ground with no chance of landing properly require a flight termination? I can't validate this, just what i've heard from insiders, but the violation was confirmed to involve the "explosive landing" so that info seems to go that way. It would make sense that they delayed termination to see if the landing flip was successful, or to at least show it, since that is the main maneuver that makes starship such a different rocket.

Getting out of the way is what is leading to success.

Now not dropping a huge exploding rocket on a major city is also a good argument.

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