The Multicam that NSF have is cool and I thoroughly recommend becoming a member if you love watching rocket launches and want even more footage than the content in the main stream.

Edited!

Thanks! (I've snipped out that bit from my comment now too.)

Any non youtube sources around please?

[Edit] wasn't there a couple guys covering the earlier main stage testing / launches, I seem to remember watching those without google streams?

(French): https://www.twitch.tv/hugolisoir

Though I bet that if youtube is blocked at your workplace, so is twitch.

No its my own stubbornness avoiding youtube, and the twitch stream seems to be a stream of the youtube, but thanks anyway.

There is another official one, slightly ahead:

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649033533846097927?s=20

Great thanks for that, pretty exciting stuff!

For youtube-exclusive sources, you can usually switch out the domain to that of an Invidious instance. Eg: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=-1wcilQ58hI

List of instances: https://docs.invidious.io/instances/

thanks, but I guess it is still youtube under the covers? I try to avoid youtube. There used to be a NASA live TV stream hosted by IBM, but seems to be down.

This isn't a NASA launch.

I realise that, but they cover Dragon launches, or used to.

they cover NASA contracted Dragon Launches. so the Crew Missions and the CRS missions.

That's a shame, since Starship seems pretty important for the Artemis program.

It's an alternate front end to YT content without YT tracking or advertising. Works for some depending on reason.

More in-depth description here: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious

Can't edit this comment anymore nor delete it, as it is too old (threshold at ~2h30 apparently). Please let it sink / downvote it

While it is obviously a test flight and failure was a likely possibility, this looked a bit worse than I had expected. There were I think at least 5 engines out on the first stage, so quite a lot of engine failures. It's impressive it could still continue, but it does indicate that there is still quite some work on Raptor left. And stage separation failed, so while they certainly gathered data they did not gather all the data they would have liked.

The interesting part will be to see the turnaround time until the next test.

This is likely expected, given that there is not enough weight on the craft to warrant using all engines. If it can fly without them, that gives them a great idea as to how much payload it can take up when they are lit.

Edit: I may be wrong, apparently they have a great telemetry integration with their stream to show which engines are lit and which are not.

Those were in an irregular pattern and not balanced. I'm pretty sure those were actual engine failures and not intentional shutdown.

They even had an infographic displaying that exact engine layout, I doubt someone drafted that up to cover up the fact they didn't light.

It seems more likely to me that they prepped the infographic of the engine layout ahead of time to keep people informed. I'm just speculating however.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/184413540809965569/10...

That was a display of the telemetry, so it indicated the actual status of the engines as far as I understand.

If they had intentionally disabled some engines, they would have mentioned that on the stream.

Yes. With 33 engines of a new design losing 1 or 2 would be pretty unremarkable and worth adding to the graphic. Losing 5 is getting into "needs improvement" and I'm sure SpaceX will be looking hard at the data they collected to see what about the design or ignition sequence they can improve next time.

I think it's astonishing the thing continued to fly after having parts of it explode and random engines seemed to shut off.

With the energies and margins involved staying in one piece through a failure is both amazing and critically important.

I'm curious about their launch cadence after this.

Does anyone know what the failure rate on these engines is and what the "safety margin" will be on the final version? As in x/y engines being out is fine?

i'd imagine this margin would be different per mission taking into consideration the payload weight, the desired altitude, etc.

At T+6ish seconds, while the vehicle is still on the launch pad, you can see a massive explosion at the base of the first stage. Then another engine blows the side of the ship apart shortly after getting airborne (T+29s), then a few more engines go later. It's possible the later failures may have been a result of the big one at the start.

I'm wondering if the fist stage simply didn't get the speed necessary for the second stage to safely separate. *edit: Looking at it again, it appears to me at least, that it started tumbling well before expected separation. With no payload, I can imagine they decided not to separate for safety reasons.

I noticed the same during ignition/lift-off, there was a chunk of debris catapulted way high up and my first thought was an "oh oh!". I wasn't actually expecting it to go too far from the launch pad, was pretty surprised the rocket kept going.

It seems like at T+55s to T+65s you can observe a LOX leak in both telemetry and the bright flame.

Around T+02:30 the assembly flips horizontally at least 90 degrees based on the telemetry and the camera views.

From what I've read their bar for this being a success was getting off the launch pad. Everything after that was a bonus.

The rocket successfully exploded high above the launch pad

However, it looks like there was widespread damage to the launch facilities due to concrete flying everywhere.

Tim Dods camera van got crunched by some large debris... seeing the damage in the area is going to be interesting.

Also 'hoppy' got some of its cladding ripped off.

My car started and then exploded after I got out of my driveway. Another successful commute to work.

The forced/unnatural feeling clapping/cheering from the video feed is so weird. It seemed like there would be a short silence in the room when something bad happened, then the "APPLAUSE" sign would go on.

There was nothing forced or unnatural about it.

Boom. That spin at the end looked quite bad. Can't believe it took that long for FTS to end things.

Still getting data until you need to boom it

Normally you only activate FTS if it looks like it might leave the launch envelope.

It was spinning around in circles. Rockets don't recover from that. Anyone who thought the rocket might stay in the launch envelope is crazy.

Every second it spins is more test data. I would be surprised if they used the FTS.

Yes, but still, blowing it up too soon would mean collecting less data, and the more data you have to "debug" the issue that obviously happened, the better.

They want to gather as much data as they can for as long as they can as long as the rocket is inside the envelope.

There’s no need to blow up your science experiment until it’s actually a danger, even if you’re certain it will soon become a danger.

This could be the only flight where they get data on actual aerodynamic forces during a spin. It's crazy expensive to test that again so might as well make the most of it.

why is everyone cheering ?

Because it achieved the primary objectives.

It cleared launch pad which was the most important goal.

Starship didn't blow up on the launch pad. That's a success during development.

What the launch did do to the launch area is going to be an interesting story to follow.

The LabPadre rover cam at 8:33 was... exciting... large chunks of things falling everywhere.

I thought you meant from the exploded rocket. So I went to T +8.33 to find the falling debris at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBeoReu12E

Then i re-read your comment...

Anything above getting it off the ground is considered a success for this test.

Getting it off the ground was the goal apparently

the cheering throughout the whole thing was extremely annoying and completely unnecessary

Those are people that have worked hard to get to this point. I don't fault them for being excited and having some fun with it. Feel like they earned it.

Indeed. that wasn't the issue. Issue was that the coverage of the launch was dominated by it. I love watching launches, find it relaxing, exciting and extremely thought provoking about our place in the cosmos. I also love watching live sport. but not at the same time.

Fan support is always important. It gives an extra boost to the players

Because it was a test launch. The whole point is to get data so it doesn't do that when you launch real cargo.

Apparently anything more than clearing the launch pad was a win. Musk's dead stare seems to disagree tho

When it exploded it was already very clear that stage separation had failed previously. So the disappointing part was 10-20 seconds before, the final explosion was inevitable, and well it was an explosion so it looked nice.

It surviving far enough to (hopefully) have a good amount of data on what might have caused the failure of the stage separation already with the first test flight is pretty great.

Getting into the air and having an obvious failure last that long -- meaning the automated abort didn't think it would escape the cleared area until then -- rather than make it explode immediately means a lot of data to make the next launch better.

That is American positive thinking. Usually really good for motivation, but sometimes annoying and hard to read for us non-US people.

SpaceX gives you an audio feed of onlookers who act like rabbid fans at a rock concert and only patches audio of the control room when they find it convenient. It's extremely annoying but you get used to it.

Surreal. Cheering after a failure and forced smiles with shaky voices from moderators afterwards.

Didn't look to me like FTS. I think that was aerodynamic forces once the altitude got low enough.

I tuned in late and was just about to rewind to the takeoff when it blew up... Oh well, with the speed they've developed this, I'm sure the next attempt won't take long.

The launch sent shivers down my spine and made me a cry a bit. What a sight to behold!

It's good to know that I am not the only one who gets a little choked up about spaceflight. Yes, we have many things we need to do on this planet - but, we cannot keep all of our eggs in one single basket - humanity needs to reach for the solar system, then the stars.

Same. Seeing the rocket clear the launchpad and race humanity towards the heavens... amazing stuff from SpaceX, the entire Starship program is a fraction of NASA and other space agencies' annual budgets yet SpaceX continues to conjure the future.

> Can't believe it took that long for FTS to end things.

There's no reason to activate the Flight Termination System until it leaves the launch corridor and safety becomes a factor. It's a test launch, you want to gather as much data as possible, even if the test doesn't go as you hoped.

Is it normal that 5 or 6 out of 33 engines didn't ignite?

Looking at the footage it might seem that some of them exploded or failed during flight.

Impressive achievement, looked to me like the vehicle started rotating before the flip was due. I wonder what the tolerance is on the number of engines that can be out? It seemed like nobody was overly concerned that several weren't firing.

(That shot of the engines in flight was pretty amazing though, bright circles like a Spielberg alien ship.)

I'm guessing even with a few of the engines not firing they can still do some math to compensate?

I think it would be fine on a test flight since there is no payload weight.

I recall old interviews stating 3 off is fine for nominal flight of a loaded starship. It was empty (no payload) so probably more failure is ok.

But there are limits on how assymetrical the boosters force can be. With 5 then 6 out I wonder if spin was due to too much assymetry. I hope we get more details.

It looked like there was multiple off on one side which can't be good right?

I find that part particularly, interesting, how fault tolerant the system is that such a number of engines fail to fire and it still looks like a nominal launch.

Even the Saturn V rockets could handle engine failures, and it had a much smaller number of them.

>(That shot of the engines in flight was pretty amazing though, bright circles like a Spielberg alien ship.)

I had similar thoughts too. When it first cut to the shot exposed for all of the thrusters, I spoke out loud how gorgeous it was and I'm sitting here by myself. This shot plus the recent spirals from fuel dumps, SpaceX has given us some cool imagery lately.

I'm wondering what the term "launch window" is referring to here. When one is going somewhere in space, it makes sense to me, as one wants things to be lined up well for an efficiency (/possibility). i.e. the launch window is when we can get where we want to go, and if we launch outside of it, we wont be able to. But if one is just going up and going down without any real concern of going anywhere in specific, what does a launch window mean?

I can imagine it perhaps has to do with having a "clear space" to launch, but that seems something much more flexible. I'm wondering what it means here?

They have to reserve airspace and "sea space" so no one can stumble under the path of a rocket which may explode.

They have to empty the town nearby, close roads, etc.

They also arranged a NASA plane to come and observe.

They have NOTAMs out to keep the airspace clear, and also have to keep a few different sections of sea clear of marine traffic (2 landing zones, and an area surrounding the takeoff zone). Add to that road closures, people evacuated from the local village etc, you just can't carry on with all this for an extended period of time.

Slightly edited definition from NOTAM [1]:

A Notice to (Airmen|Air Men|Airman|Air Missions) is a notice filed with an aviation authority to alert aircraft pilots of potential hazards along a flight route or at a location that could affect the flight.

Might be helpful to fellow aviation-challenged folks.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM

Copying analysis/speculation from the reddit thread:

- in the morning so they've got the maximum amount of daylight to deal with any possible outcome

- 62mn max window duration is the limit for acceptable propellant boil off

Also, keep in mind that this is an (almost) orbital launch, and that it's re-entering. In this case, it's re-entering just north of Hawaii, so there may be reasons in that region to limit the launch window.

As others have said, scheduling no-fly zones on multiple locations (Starship will crash land near Hawaii), but also things like "we only have so much super chilled liquid oxygen and it's going to be boiling off".

Tim Dodd's stream said a few minutes ago that once they get within 45 minutes of launch, they are either launching today or not for two more days, because by that point if you try to unload all the fuel and oxygen too much boils away and you need to bring in truckloads of it more for the next attempt.

Space is hard.

What I was really worried about was an explosion at the launch pad, that would have really delayed things so I'm glad that didn't happen. Par for the course in developing a new rocket seems to be two failures in the first 10 launches, so they can have their next one fail too and still not get a bogey. I hope they at least make it to stage separation next time though.

It was glorious. A boom but I would argue a success. Congrats SpaceX

Video analysis:

* Parts of launch platform going up in the air.

* Rocket drifting laterally wrt to the launch tower.

* Part of hydraulic system blowing up with an engine at T+30

* T+50: fire on the left of the rocket engines

* T+1m05: something blowing up on the right

* T+1m27: weird color between engines. recirculation? fire?

* T+2m0: trajectory just wrong, but still not destroying it to get more data out of nominal parameters

* T+3m: green flames means oxygen-rich mix burn-corroding the engine from the inside

* T+4m: booster exploding, then a few seconds later starship. Was it voluntary?

* launch tower relatively intact, all things considered

* rocket stayed attached to launchpad for a long time up to 7 seconds (time to light up all engines?)

Launch: Lost up to 6 engines, Max-Q passed, separation failure, going a bit KSP-style, vehicle destruction

T 0: launch

T-40s: Countdown hold, no scrubbing yet. Can hold for 15mn. Problem with bleed purge. Would restart at T-40s

T-1: Gimbals working ok

T-3: Fully loaded

T-7: Only first stage to finish loading (scheduled at T-3)

T-11: Still go for launch

T-18: SpaceX "Starship’s Raptor engines are chilling down in preparation for liftoff"

T-37: EM "Starship on track to launch in ~37 mins"

T-80: SpaceX "Fueling of Starship’s upper stage is now underway"

T-86: SpaceX "Fueling of the Super Heavy booster is underway"

T-117: SpaceX "The Starship team is go for prop load; team is keeping an eye on the weather"

T-8h: EM "All systems currently green for launch"

----

Note: Can't edit or delete my previous comment anymore, please disregard it. New info will be on this one

----

Launch in about 1 hours (13:28 UTC), which would be:

- 6:28 Pacific

- 7:28 Mountain

- 8:28 Central

- 9:28 Eastern

- 15:28 European

- Other: https://time.is/1328_20_Apr_2023_in_UTC

Official video stream starts ~45mn beforehand

----

- Resources/info:

https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/12n02uf/rspacex_int...

https://twitter.com/SpaceX

https://twitter.com/elonmusk

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...

- Resources/watch:

Twitter stream (official, slightly ahead): https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1649033533846097927?s=20

Mission control audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBKCePn1E5A

Multistream: https://multistream.co/p/RB8Ao4GidTy/Starship%5C_Flight%5C_T...

Everyday Astronaut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAl3gVvMNNM

LabPadre Multi Plex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BQKCnPkIc

NASASpaceflight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uouujjgkR3A

And the stream from Everyday Astronaut, Tim Dodd:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAl3gVvMNNM

>rocket stayed attached to launchpad for a long time up to 7 seconds (time to light up all engines?)

This is the expected behavior. Engine lighting occurs in 3 stages and takes 6-8 seconds to complete.

Damn, poor launchpad ^^

I had never seen a rocket with twice the thrust of a Saturn V doing loop-de-loops before exploding live in front of everyone. Neither had anyone else. Great success.

I've done that plenty of times in Kerbal : )

Was funny to see in reality, it matched up quite closely to my Kerbal experience.

Yeah you could immediately tell it went off-nominal if you played kerbals before. I always thought the way kit works in KSP isn’t realistic. Well turns out it’s quite the opposite :)

Exactly what I felt too. Jumbo rocket on first launch spinning, feels right at home, just missing Jeb/Valentina :).

Big kudos to the whole SpaceX team, and all the surrounding people who have gotten things this far and I'm exciting for the next attempt!

Rapid unscheduled disassembly. Classic! :-)

The average user knows what SpaceX is about, likely has heard the falcon 1 rocket achieved a milestone with rocket reuse after multiple successful launches.

But, why this launch is so important? why so much is riding on this ?

It is the largest rocket in history and it is planned to be fully reusable.

If SpaceX manage to make this work they will have a launch vehicle capable of launching much more mass to orbit which will open up space exploration.

It also provides us with a kind of access to space that we lost when the Space Shuttles were grounded. It's interesting that the Shuttle was considered a hugely wasteful boondoggle in its day and age, yet now a private profit-seeking enterprise is making something that's just as capable on a way bigger scale.

The shuttle ended up having a cost of $1.5B per launch. Starship is aiming for a cost of $2M per launch. They'll likely miss that goal, but even missing by an order of magnitude will be a huge game changer. And obviously price will be very different from cost.

We're looking at the cost of a tonne to orbit being similar to what a kg was during the shuttle era.

the problem with the space shuttle is that it's minimum payload was an airplane with room for 7 people. it's like if you wanted to mail someone a letter so you put the letter in a van, and called a towing company to send the van.

The shuttle was hamstrung by DoD and senate requirements.

Arguably the entire concept was flawed, fueled more by a sci-fi concept of "wouldn't it be cool if" rather than a sober cost-benefit analysis. It was a space station, built into a rocket, built into an airplane that is also a reentry vehicle - most of the motivation to reuse the vehicle in the first place goes away if you don't make it so damn complex!

It just makes so much more sense to launch big payloads on heavy lift rockets, humans separately on human rated craft, and leave the space station part (robot arm etc) in orbit.

(The one type of mission you can't do without something like an orbiter is satellite retrieval. This capability was used a total of 4 times. Not really worth it.)

I am 100% good with NASA pursuing "wouldn't it be cool if" and leaving sober ROI-gated developments to private industry.

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

The actual concept was actually pretty decent (even kerbals would say so!), except somehow it got cut down to the point of uselessness.

It is the same idea that they had for a Space Shuttle. Reusable vehicle that can be used many times and make space accessible. Unfortunately, Space Shuttle did not make that a reality as it was too complex and required a large multi month refurbishment after each mission.

Starship should be able to solve that issue and make space accessible. At least that is the idea. We will see how it ends up.

I would argue that the Space Shuttle was mostly wasteful because it really wasn't that reusable. You had to fully refurbish the SRBs, you lose the tank, The Shuttles required a ton of refurbishment themselves, all for a rather small amount of mass to orbit.

The cheapest and most popular rocket today in terms of cost per kilogram sent to low-earth-orbit is the SpaceX Falcon 9, which is estimated to cost about $2700/kg. If the Starship meets its goals, it will cost $10/kg to LEO. It has a payload capacity and infrastructure which can economically deliver massive payloads to any solid surface in the solar system. It could send three full-sized bulldozers to Mars in a single trip. This is the largest scale space project ever conceived and portents a major shake-up to the space industry and a big step towards establishing a permanent human presence off Earth.

$10/kg to LEO is insane

That's the cost to SpaceX. There's no way they charge customers anywhere near that.

Even if they charged $100/kg it would change the world.

It is. The Falcon 9, of which there have been hundreds of launches already, costs $60 Million per launch. And somehow Musk thinks he can make a rocket that is 10 times bigger 30 times cheaper? Wishful thinking. Best case imho is that they take the launch cost down to about 200M-ish over the next 15 years. That's a cost of $1000/kg and sounds about right to me.

How much of a setback would disaster be? Would SpaceX keep going, or would failure leave room for competitors to take over? (If there are competitors? I don't even know tbqh.)

if the 2nd stage re entry turns out to be fundamentally unworkable, big setback. but if the rocket fails for any of 100 other reasons, no big deal

I haven't followed this specific launch in much detail, but part of why SpaceX has been so successful is they expect a certain amount of failure and don't pin the failure of the program on the failure of any one test. This allows them to iterate faster than other programs that might have less test launches and thus rely more on the success of the launches they do perform. I've heard for example that this rocket is already out-of-date and the next planned rockets already have a bunch of improvements.

It would range from unfortunate to a non-issue. The entire flight is not expected to be successful, the purpose is data gathering. The worst case scenario is that it fails on the pad and damages the launch infrastructure, which would be a huge setback to the project. If it fails anywhere else it's probably fine.

Not a big setback at all. They would have to analyze reasons for failure and make changes. There are no serious "reusability" competitors, especially at Starship size.

SpaceX is trying to iterate quickly on this rocket so they have several already assembled. Next two launches will also be fully expendable.

Disaster is complete demolition of the launch site, setting their schedule back many months and costing them a rumored hundreds of millions to rebuild. They've run enough tests to support reasonable confidence that won't happen. The directionality towards mass manufacturing the rockets, instrumenting to observability scale data collection to feed engineering course corrections, and resilience to setbacks is promising.

The hundreds of millions figure doesn’t sound implausible either way necessarily, but I wonder if it includes the R&D costs? I.e. building number 2 would be incrementally much less expensive than building number 1.

I wouldn't be surprised R&D numbers were included in the rumored figures, but considering their lessons learned today from the extensive concrete spalling incurred by the launch, there is even more R&D to perform with the next build-out. Especially when we take into account some observers are claiming SpaceX is installing a deluge system [1] for the next build.

I'd like to hear from some rocket nerds why launch pads don't sit on top of a giant, deep water body, as the deluge systems as I vaguely understand them seem primarily to manage the shock and secondarily the heat, and concrete is a difficult material to manage over a long period of frequent use as a shock absorber.

[1] https://fossbytes.com/nasas-water-jet-system-protect-rocket-...

>How much of a setback would disaster be?

SpaceX has followed a tech startup-like model of iterative development AKA "move fast, break things", in which many rockets go boom and (as saberdancer said) every boom is studied to reduce the odds of the next one go boom. Basically an edit-compile-debug loop writ large. This is why SpaceX's official countdown schedule states "excitement guaranteed" at T-0:00.

>Would SpaceX keep going, or would failure leave room for competitors to take over? (If there are competitors? I don't even know tbqh.)

As saberdancer said, there is no serious competitor. Rocket Lab has achieved ~~reusability~~ recovery of small rockets and has a good launch record, but a) has not yet figured out how to get them to land other than on the ocean and b) can't launch them weekly/daily like SpaceX. Bezos's Blue Origin actually landed rockets before SpaceX, but only suborbitally. ULA (US) and Arianespace (Europe), the two large commercial-payload providers pre-SpaceX, aren't at the point of test launches of any reusable rockets.

The above is all before Starship, which if it works will give SpaceX a) a fully reusable launch vehicle (existing SpaceX rockets' upper stages aren't reusable), and b) the ability to launch gigantic payloads. The combination of the two will further massively cut launch cost. I've read that even if Starship is fully expended, it will still be the same $2700/kg that existing SpaceX rockets cost, with that aforementioned gigantic payload capacity.

>The cheapest and most popular rocket today in terms of cost per kilogram sent to low-earth-orbit is the SpaceX Falcon 9, which is estimated to cost about $2700/kg. If the Starship meets its goals, it will cost $10/kg to LEO.

I've read that the cost will be $2700/kg even if Starship is completely expended; that is, no reuse. But far, far, far larger payloads, of course.

Falcon 9 can be partly reused. Falcon 1 was a predecessor, that only flew 4 times IIRC.

TL;DR it’s the tallest and most powerful rocket, is reusable, designed to refuel in space, and intended to take cargo/humans to Mars, and thus its successful launch marks the beginning of us becoming a multi-planetary species, per Musk’s plan.

There's far less certainty around how viable a system it will be and the only way to fully know is through a semi-successful test flight.

It has more engines than any rocketship, making it the most powerful rocket ever built. (33 total)

https://ibb.co/7SrTK7P

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

This will be the first ever launch of "Starship" SpaceX's next generation rocket.

Starship (and more specifically the Super Heavy booster that carries Starship) is the most powerful rocket in history and is designed for the purpose of carrying humans to Mars. SpaceX's new Starlink satellites are much bigger than the old ones and really require a larger rocket - this will be Starship.

This is also the first ever orbital flight test of a "Full Flow Staged Combustion Engine" [0], making the Raptor Engine the most advanced rocket engine in the world. Many people didn't think that full flow staged combustion would work so this is a great vindication of the concept.

Starship will also be the lunar lander for the upcoming NASA Artemis moon landings.

[0] https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-engine-cycles/

Thank you for this

The key difference is that this is 100% reusable. With Falcon and Falcon heavy, the second stage is non-recoverable which is still quite expensive.

They currently send up Starlink satellites in batches of about 50 on the Falcon 9. On a more or less weekly cadence or 4 times/200 satellites a month.

When Starship gets going it might carry as many as 400+ per launch. In other words eventually they'll be able to throw more stuff into orbit in 1 month than they currently can in 1 year.

It literally means their bottle neck will be producing enough starlinks, and other payloads, per day. Incidentally, those things are also used by the military and in Ukraine.

Having this much payload capacity at this moment in time is very important. Without SpaceX people who want to put satellites into orbit would be somewhat at the mercy of Russia and China as capacity elsewhere is extremely limited.

I'd argue not that much actually _riding_ on this, it might just blow up on the launchpad or it might go up in the air. Either way they will try again in a few months.

So the difference between success (defined by musk as getting far away enough from the launchpad not to damage it) and failure (rud on pad) is a few months on the development timeline and money to rebuild the (quite complicated) tower.

Will be fun to watch either way, unless its a scrub.

If they have, like, 3 consecutive launchpad explosions over the next few years, then maybe we'd start talking about the whole project being in trouble.

If it actually does the whole flightpath then that will be pretty amazing.

The other question, why is this important: Its the biggest, most re-usable most ambitious rocket ever made. The 33 engines, apart from being numerous, are of a design more ambitious/challenging than any other rocket engine we've ever seen.

(edit: engine adjectives)

>> Even each one of the 33 engines has more complicated design than any other rocket engine we've ever seen.

I was with you up to there. Spacex loves simple designs. The Raptor seems much simpler that the Space Shuttle main engines for example. Moat advanced design maybe, but not sure about "complicsted".

To be fair at least one of the intermediate raptors was quite complicated, gp's info might just be out of date

ok maybe complicated is the wrong word, but my understanding is that full-flow staged combustion was rated as very hard to develop verging on impossible a decade or two ago

https://everydayastronaut.com/raptor-engine/

https://hackaday.com/2019/02/13/the-impossible-tech-behind-s...

Complicated can be more than physical complication. I understand (though I could be wrong) that these engines have a much more finicky timing sequence for things like startup than other engine types. I think calling that sort of thing a complication fair.

Here's a video of Elon explaining the Raptor engine design, and comparing Raptor 1 and Raptor 2 (Raptor 2 is much simpler): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7MQb9Y4FAE

The end is nigh: Mr. E. Musk was reasonable and sensible while talking about starship first flight, "if it goes far enough from the launch pad before something goes wrong, it will be a success".

He's always set low expectations for test launches.

He has always set (intentionally?) low expectations regarding launches.

Not for Falcon 1. He said he believes they have 90% chance of a successful launch.

After that they had 3 failed launches and company almost went bankrupt.

Good point. He probably learned his lesson (at least for launches) from that point on.

He said the same for Falcon Heavy

I like SpaceX Musk a lot more than Twitter Musk. It feels almost like this past year never happened.

This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. [1]

[1] https://xkcd.com/1133/

I've never loved a relevant xkcd so much.

NASASpaceflight stream if you like informed commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uouujjgkR3A

SpaceX's streams start after a lot of interesting stuff happens, and can be a little sparse.

Boom Today. No Boom Tomorrow.

Boom today. Chance for boom tomorrow.

Crazy that YouTube recommended me this fake Space X channel on YouTube. It's a mix of the actual stream but with deep fake Elon Musk voice trying to get you to send him cryptocurrencies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOBZqwS0ELQ

Sounds like the scammers who hijacked Linus Tech Tips’ YouTube channel a few weeks ago.

It never stops! All the crypto-scam videos that show up during all the live streams for SpaceX launches, Telsa events, etc... is just unbelievable.

With all of Google's AI/ML resources, you would think they could do something about it.

I totally bought into it (before the launch) until I actually scanned the QR code.

Not all the engines were lit. Were they within margin for stage sep and if not how many engines can they afford to lose from the thirty three?

Congrats spacex team!!! Keep inspiring the rest of us!!!

Marvin Martian is very pleased today.

This is an enormously important launch. I had $20 it will be pushed to 4/20, so a lot riding on this. :)

But seriously, I can't help but feel this is a historical moment. Hope you make the time to watch and remember it.

I'm the other side of the bet. Still not hoping for a scrub though!

I award this comment 218 doge for wholesome attitude. That clears all debts between us my good sir. Perhaps one day you can buy me a space beer on mars.

Heh, I applaud you, my friend! Let's meet up then, at the cantina of Marsbase!

Sensible, either way you win something

Clearly you should have put $69 on it, what were you thinking?

Goddamit.

Seeing that much SpaceX employees cheering after the explosion was kind of strange.

OK this is not complete failure, but this is still a failure. Things did not go according to plans.

I understand the need for PR and damage control, but I am not comfortable with it, this is not a success, this is work in progress and so far this launcher is unproven.

This is assuming a strategy that aligns with your values. SpaceX has been made successful with their strategy. Look at their entire history of explosions and see that every major issue like this has taught them well. They are eating EVERYONE's lunch

"How to not land an orbital rocket booster" - https://youtu.be/bvim4rsNHkQ

I love this video

I say this only half-jokingly: think of the satisfaction you feel when a challenging piece of code finally compiles. You know there is a lot of debugging ahead, but progress is progress.

This is an excellent analogy.

Not blowing up on the pad is a huge success. The rocket got past max-q, and they’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that 33 engines can work together on one booster. I remember a couple years ago when folks like you were confident that it was impossible to run that many engines simultaneously.

It is a success. They cleared the tower and able to collect data to do course correction.

Failure is not being able to finish development of starship within a reasonable time period. This is just an iteration.

> but I am not comfortable with it, this is not a success, this is work in progress and so far this launcher is unproven

we need a "middlebrow dismissal" link

That's really not how engineering tests work - the objectives of the test were met, by definition that's a success. Not achieving stretch goals doesn't make it a failure.

Of course it's a work in progress and the launcher is unproven. But damn, that was an amazing first attempt. With more vehicles already in integration, I have little doubt they'll eventually nail this.

It was a test, an experiment. The outcome gave them lots of valuable data. They all knew the likelihood of it failing was very high, so its nice to have it work better than expected.

Having the culmination of your work for the past several years actually culminate in a test flight is definitely a thing to celebrate in my opinion. The test flight is a ... test ... of a hypothesis that this system will make it to space (technically not orbit this flight).

Even with the failure they undoubtedly gathered loads of metrics to address for their next attempt.

The promise of Starship will lower the financial and logistical barriers of getting to space significantly which has the potential to open our civilization to tons of new possibilities that we haven't even considered yet.

Launching rockets is very hard, clearly, and this one is quite big.

At this point, I don't believe Elon Musk words, I think the guy is not "fully there", unfortunately, I've heard too much bullshit.

I also think that some of the best rocket engineers on the planet are working at SpaceX and that they could achieve their mission, but I'll fully believe it when it is done.

I hope that Elon ego will not ruin this.

What's up with the presenters' audio? Either they all have a lisp, or something is not configured right. It sounds like they're saying 'Starschlip' instead of 'Starship'.

They have a lisp. The guy who presented the fuel a few seconds ago sounded just fine but he had a deeper voice.

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