SpaceX may have solved one problem, only to find more on latest Starship flight | Hacker News Reader

SpaceX may have solved one problem, only to find more on latest Starship flight

arstechnica.com

22 pointsLorenDB25 comments

The best deep-dive series in the SpaceX realm is CSI Starbase.

If you are interested in highly informed speculation on the resonance issues that Starship is facing, this episode is very long and nerdy, but somehow flies by.

"POGO: The 63-Year-Old Problem Threatening Starship's Success"

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

I would advise people against that youtube channel. Notably the failure of the previous launch had nothing to do with POGO or vibration of any kind.

As the name implies they do a lot of "CSI Enhance" stuff where they stack speculation on top of speculation where they repeatedly assume that their previous speculation is the truth.

all they did was move the resonance problem with there fuel lines somewhere else.......and it should be noted that there top shelf guy who was doing resonance mitigating design and engineering, left the company last year, quietly, all smiles and handshakes. resonance is test bench defying, in that real world issues only show up when there is no dampening effects from iether bieng bolted to a test stand or even just sitting on the ground under the influence of gravity, so figuring it out on the ground requires, math, mojo, and experience.Lots of counterintuive gotcha's as well.

> top shelf guy who was doing resonance mitigating design and engineering, left the company last year

Who?

from northern europe somewhere, also did work for major auto makers, may be working from home, may have left with his team, from memory of a skim read last year only remember because I like Resonance and TV engineering, similar but different interesting phenominion and continues to be challenging. The one thing they have going for them on the starship program, is data.....the thing going against them is that they are making 600 changes to each iteration......which is actualy ok, as when they solve for the issues, they should end up with a wide configuration envelope for the ship.

> from northern europe somewhere, also did work for major auto makers, may be working from home, may have left with his team

This doesn't sound like it describes anyone in ITAR-regulated work.

the ringers generaly dont fit any description's ,right 19 year old getting paid to play with the fed's computers right at this moment

Let me be blunter: it doesn't sound credible absent a name.

I hestitate, but ok, blunter then,Mr,umm, Mr ummmm, hmmmmmmm , ANYWAY, the only other datum I retain is that the informatiin was contained in a regular published article (from the internet), and not a blog or forum, and was not a "hype" piece, just strait across the plate journalism if I had the spit, and the time I would wade through trying out various search terms, but I cant quite face the internet trying to sell me whatever wild missinterpretation of "space x resonce engineering chief retires"(2024)......I am betting they run with "retires", but refuse to look

Watching the video, it looked like the booster was still going at separation.

I've made that mistake many times on kerbal.

That sounds like hot staging, which they've been doing for a while now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistage_rocket#Hot-staging

I assume that SpaceX doesn't want to completely shut off the Super Heavy engines during separation, in order to avoid the requirement of ullage thrusting for the boost back burn. But hot-staging is really hard on the equipment. It's like having a flame diverter directly below the Starship's raptors. And it is known to have caused problems in previous flights.

Yep. And the hot staging interstage they're currently using as a flame diverter is expended, expensive, and heavy.

So many of the fixes that I've read about add weight, that it's going to be interesting to see what fraction of the originally intended payload capacity remains,

Gen 2 booster will replace the ring with struts.

> to avoid the requirement of ullage thrusting

To expand, this has to do with keeping liquid propellantws settled. If you stop thrusting your propellant will start floating around in zero g. That means you need to thrust to settle it back down before you can fully engage your engines. That complexity is sidestepped by just keeping the engines running at the rocket equivalent of idle.

Its hot staging. they even refer on the stream to MECO as most engine cut off.

https://www.planetearthandbeyond.co/p/starship-was-doomed-fr...

The suggestion here is that they've screwed up with no way out.

when the article starts with "Musk’s impotent attempts to get his giant shiny phallus to work are the perfect metaphor for the man."

I have a hard time taking the rest of the article as a reasoned technical analysis.

How many rockets will they fail with before we start to question their own technical analysis?

> How many rockets will they fail with before we start to question their own technical analysis?

Given SpaceX's track record? A hell of a lot more than a handful. (Particularly when we're comparing reflown and virgin boosters.)

Maybe their contempt for Musk was precipitated by their becoming aware of his contemptible foolishness and not the other way around. Just because someone openly hates somebody else that doesn't mean their hatred is irrational; honest, technically inclined, people often have strong opinions on that basis.

Look at the articles the author posts. A person who oozes emotion and hate in all their writing is not a person holding rational takes. Their emotions and hate have overridden any intelligent thought they may be capable of.

Even if all their hate was fully justified, that's still no reason to rant and scream their hate to the world rather than writing intelligently and convincing others of their viewpoints in a rational, impartial, way. Their writing will not convince any rational person of their viewpoints.

This is a convenient way to not answer the points raised.

SpaceX will continue "losing" Starships for a long time.

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