Here is the view from our Hoop 2 solar streaming in the last moments before this camera was destroyed on 4/20/23. If you want to help us replace the camera, our paypal is epicspacemedia@gmail.com. Cheers! One more step towards Mars.
So your camera and NSF's car were in about the same situation. I don't understand why they put a car there instead of some kind of metal stand or framework.
Wow! You can easily see the moment the pad broke apart... The plume changes from mostly smoke, to clearly dirt, followed almost instantly with concrete. Amazing! The dirt cloud comes busting out right at 31 seconds into the video!
Yes, the pad hold for quite a while. But the sustained blast eventually cause the collapse. Which is good news in my opinion, a bit better protection and it should survive.
@@Mosern1977 The engines start at a low throttle. The pad didn't break from sustained blast, it broke from the throttle up. They will have no choice but to install a proper flame diverter and deluge system. Concrete will not withstand this.
It's like a bomb goes off and concrete isn't gonna last very long... Definitely a flame & debis channel has to be installed as well as a water deluge... You'd think the them ''smart'' (😂) engineers would have known that with 39 engines somethings gonna happen 😅
@@patrickrijkee The concrete apparently had no rebar (only in the bracing beams) The plating they're putting up will do just fine, for this installation. I think the real launch cadence they're looking forward to might work best with an ocean platform anyway... No closures of beaches and roads
Wow, it takes a real genius to accomplish this... fantastic, really is amazing, absolutely genius, I can't believe my eyes, my mind is absolutely blown by this concept of something with force kicking dirt up in the air... wow, just wow.
Absolutely mental. That rocket blew apart reinforced concrete like it was styrofoam. It's actually pretty incredible Starship got as high as it did, considering the damage it surely must've taken at liftoff
Apparently the slab wasn't even reinforced, was it? The pictures show rebar remains from the vaporized bracing beam, but not sure the rest of the slab was as seriously built.
@@u1zha There have been a lot of pictures taken of chunks that flew hundreds of feet with rebar still embedded in them so I would take at at least some of the concrete below the launch pad was reinforced
what you see is a protectiv structure the tanks are hidden inside, atlest the methan and oxygen, the nitrogen has no extra shield i think (not as dangerous)
@@hmcredfed1836 it has to do with temperature (insulation), not with how dangerous the stuff inside is. only the tank initially planned for water has no insulation over it, since the water is at ambient temperature
Those guys are professional and they freaking know what they are doing, there is a simple reason why the tanks are so close….. take a guess, c’mon, tell me. Because I freaking don’t know
@@luudest 3 Tanks filled with Liquid Oyxgen, 2 Tanks filled with Liquid Nitrogen, 2 Tanks filled with Water, and one is an unused shell (the one which has the worst damage). So nothing really dangerous but 5 Tanks contain stuff which is really, really cold.. there are also a few horizontal Tanks for the Liquid Methane next to the vertical Tanks. Though keep in mind that all these Tanks were used to fill the Rocket, so when it launched they should have been mostly empty because their content was pumped into the Rocket during the Countdown.
@@spray_cheese IR is usually just heat, it isn't really visible to the human eye. And since this baby pumps out a fair bit of high temperature gases, an IR filter would indeed be necessary, lest the sensor gets overwhelmed by the exhausts rather than capturing anything else in view 😉👍
@M. S. yea that’s where I am as well even with the explanation. Im thinking it’s not an IR filter at all. More likely caused by sensor damage on the camera.
@Noxti! The angle was done on purpose to make sure the tower wasn't damaged. The rocket was right on course just slightly slower till it lost too many engines. What else gave you the idea is wasn't under control. You know they blew it up themselves before you say the explosion next, which more proves my point.
you can clearly see the concrete held up for 10 seconds. First dustcloud looks clean after engine start at 0:21. Then from 0:31 another type of dustcloud appears, full of darker material and rocks.
I believe they started the engines at reduced thrust first, once all good they opened them up and then the damaged started. I also saw that they released the hold-down clamps at ignition, its stayed on the mount until the TWR exceeded past 1.0.
@HMC RedFed Superheavy boosters will never be on Mars. Only the starship orbiter vehicle, which has a lot less engines. So this argument makes no sense.
haha, with the colour change on impact and all the debris, that looks like footage from the nuclear explosion tests back in the 50s. That's some power there Awesome footage!
Take a step back, recall that SpaceX have a track record innovating on many fronts to find cheaper and simpler solutions than government space programs consider standard. They also said they considered the static fire outcome and they did full thrust simulations of Fondag, where do you call incompetence? Simulations work within certain assumptions. New materials, new thrust ranges, it's naive to just trust in virtual reality extrapolations. Things need to be tested in real world. Test to destruction is a thing.
The pad clearly was not designed for this type of launch vehicle. NASA heavies like the STS, Saturn V, and SLS had elevated reinforced thick concrete pads where plumes were channeled into chambers, directing their outward firing. Furthermore, they use sound suppresion water systems to protect both the launch vehicle and the surrounding structure from acoustical shock waves to mitigate damage. This was learned mostly from the very early Saturn launches. When I first saw the Starship launch pad, I thought there would be no way that pad would hold up, but considering the small platform and size it did and impressive job staying intact as much as it did!
On one hand, yes, on the other hand, this is called rapid prototyping and they optimize budget way differently than government space program money sinks. Not cheap to find big space to snap up for this sort of mildly dangerous pastimes. I suspect is playing a good psychological game, having things so close including Starhopper. The basic instinct tells SpaceX reliability engineering corps to bring their best game.
When you watch this video you can see the moment that the concrete gave way. The cloud changes colour and there is suddenly debris in the cloud. Pretty cool stuff
The water cooled steel plate was already in construction at the time. They knew that bare flat concrete wasnt gonna do it. But they went for the flight thinking it could make through a single launch.
I remember when I had a bbq in my bedroom. I was 8 and got in a lot of trouble. Turns out they aren't suitable for bedroom use. This clip reminds me of that.
Having worked in Strength of Concrete research at Redland Technology I can say with my hand on my Heart, “That was inevitable “. A thermic Lance basically uses the same principle but with less heat than rocket engines. Launching from the moon will be easier when that day comes.
It looks like the pad didn't break apart until a good 5 seconds after the engines ignited. It would be interesting to see the pad as this was happening.
Its incredible that engineers got this so, so wrong, it was no where near as robust as it needed to be, I mean like no where near! And why were those tanks so close to the pad??? Insane!
The problem is… they had so much prior warning! Their own test fires were enough to heavily damage the launch structure. What would a full scale launch do? Decades of launch pad data already exists. It’s been around since the 60’s!
Interesting because you see the plume change color as the concrete starts breaking up and it goes from an orange/yellow to gray and then the bits and chunks of concrete start flying by and at the camera.
Interesting how some of the trashed cameras - for instance Everyday Astronauts - had artifacting on the recordings before they were even hit. This one held up quite well.
Holy Shiite!! Its a good thing that they did not have a pad abort after six seconds of engine start, because I doubt the pedestal would have held the weight after that blast. That was a lot like watching a volcanic eruption up close.
The mount itself was on pile foundations, with rebar and metal sheathing. I doubt it was compromised. Not in 6 seconds. The exposed concrete slab (which wasn't even a monolithic slab? And lacked even reinforcement except for the bracing beams between piles) was completely undermined and launched into the air in smithereens. I believe that the deluge plate will do just fine... Unless they manage to somehow make it too piecemeal again and exhaust plume sends it cannonballing through the tank farm
I can't help but to be curious about the cause of failure of the pad. Was it primarily the temparature that caused spalling of the concrete, thus opening pathways for erosion and accelerated damage, or was it the force of the thrust that caused enough differential deformation between the center and edges that cracks opened thus opening pathways for erosion and accelerated damage. If the force was the primary cause of failure, it occurs to me, that if SpaceX had used piles under the pad to support it more rigidly, they might have been able to get away with their no-flame trench idea. The temperature initiated failure mode would require cooling obviously. I think that SpaceX is leaning towards the temperature induced failure based on their comments.
Very good question! If we think more into it: The Legs have the piles deep into the ground to sustain the weight of the rocket, - and that's the same weight, the rocket engines have to lfit up - relieving the OLM Mount - but bringing the same "weight" to the concrete pad underneath. And that had no piles under it... That could change the whole discussion substantially!
anyone who uses a acetylene oxygen torch knows what is does to concrete ... apparently the university didn't teach any of them that it explodes and fractures with a bunch of rockets pointed at it at 90 degrees,.. it needs a flame trench to divert that energy away , but they think a flat piece of metal 90' will fix it.. if you take a water hose and point it at a wall how does that water flow, now take that same hose and point it down a driveway... It's amazing to me they can't figure out simple things , not my problem see if you build a engine and it blows up on your first run it a fuck up,,, but for them it's on the job learning and engineering
@@cardboardboxification As far as I understood it was a "concrete designed for high temperature envrionments". I am not at all familiar with it, so I cannot comment beyond that, but one thing you cannot do is assume that it's behaviour will be the same as your run of the mill concrete mix. Temperature will primarily affect the concrete in two ways: the thermal shock itself, though there are materials that can handle it better than others (think kiln liners), but for most concrete, the worst thing is the embedded water which vaporizes explosively thus destroying it. That is what your experienced with your torch, most likely. The other way, and the most explosive, is the vaporization of the water embedded. I cannot comment on the amount of water in that material as I don't know it, but if it is supposed to be used in high temperature environments I can only assume it ends up with much less moisture than typical concrete. Again, an assumption based in description and the fact that static fire tests were conducted without the high temperatures causing major issues. But temperature alone is not the only potential issue here.
@@theguyfromsaturn yes I use a torch , I don't have any rocket engines to play with .. by the failure it can't handle the heat and pressure , don't care what their calculator told them it can handle.. in the real world its a big time fuck up .. but they are rocket engineers so it's not a fuck up.. I couldn't imagine If I built that for a customer , and had a failure like that , can't imaging the lawsuits
@@genius1a It may also be why the data of the static fire let them think the pad would be able to handle one launch... they were mostly at that point looking at temperature response data.
The pink Color change is probably from the infrared filter being damaged and displaced, Incase anyone is wondering. I know because Iv removed the IR filter from a digital camera before and this is what all the images looked like. IT could easily see the flashes from remotes and low light conditions though.
You get so used to hearing the countdown ... "10, 9, 8, 7... " followed by the muffled roar of the engines. This short video demonstrates what it really sounds like. No human voice, loud hissing sounds, and then this massive roar. And now flying chunks of concrete. That's what a few million pounds of thrust sounds like, eh?
before this video played, I got an ad of people trying to get the last presidential suite available, by arguing over how much power they have in a video game.
Yeah, that was pretty violent. I don't think you needed an engineering or aerospace degree to have predicted the need for flame/thrust diversion. But, then South Padre Island may have been in Mexico today.
The only rapid unscheduled disassembly in this mission was the launchpad concrete a few seconds after ignition. What happened in the sky later was a planned disassembly that took several seconds from destruction charge firing till the rocket actually disassembled
As of 4/29/23, I have only heard one opinion, saying how lucky it seems, that Starship #1, cleared the pad. But I agree. I also learned how overbuilt strong it must be, to have been able to withstand the launch. Reminds me of the Shuttle. Hard as a rock.
it seems that launching pad wad poorly designed and the surrounding area was not properly protected there is some element of negligence and compromise in this launch
Take a step back, recall that they have a track record innovating on many fronts to find cheaper and simpler solutions than government space programs consider standard. You can't just look at government builds and state "yes this super charged fogbank padded thing is exactly optimal bang for the buck" Thing is experimental still, the whole starship system is in early testing stage. And booster thrust numbers are going where nobody has gone before. Simulations may very well tell untruth. A practical test is the ground truth. (Test to destruction is a thing. They destroyed fuel tanks and plenty of engines probably too... they just do it more publicly than the F-1 exploders in 60ies, and the public is taken aback it seems)
No. Aside from debris coming at you at speeds far exceeding that of sound, the sheer sound pressure created by those exhausts is most definitely enough to cause heart failure.
I read that the FAA is looking to have a pretty strong influence in consequent launches. Seems like they were not amused by this rather simplistic launch pad basically disintegrating and damaging property for miles around.
Imagine the space shuttle that's producing less thrust than this currently using a sophisticated noise and flame surpression system. Idk why spacex rushed things if they can learn from previous rocket technology and prevent further damage to the environment around pad.
I have to wonder, who was the genius that decided to put those storage tanks (yes, damaged in the launch) right next to the launch pad? And, does that genius still have a job at SpaceX?
An absolute masterclass on all of the incredibly poor choices in pad design, construction, and location, at Starbase! The pad should be a flame trench titan like the launch complex at Kennedy, and it should be a few MILES away from the rest of the infrastructure! Imagine the damage if the damn thing exploded 150 feet above the tower! The entire facility would have been devastated,
look like the concrete cloud appears just at the moment the starship is moving. My guess is that the static test did not show the problem because of that. As the rocket is going up, the plume probably sent some supersonic debris from the support directly on floor, causing it to break. After that the plume has done the rest. But this is not an excuse. This whole pad is a ridiculous non-engineered thing, typical of a management failure.
I feel sorry for that one dude behind the 4th tower on the left. He probably never felt a thing though, I hope. (Set your screen-aspect ratio correctly to see the uncropped edges)
