Do they even have an RSO as such anymore since the adoption of AFTS? That said, if those two plume events highlighted by Scott was the automated flight termination system working, it means it was quite "patient" in waiting through quite a bit of spinning before deciding to terminate the flight.
crazy. I just assumed that they delayed using it until the last second, because they hadn't technically left their flight envelope yet, so they just let it flop around for awhile to gather more data
There's no reason why you aren't correct. Until (or if) we have something from SpaceX explaining events, then it's all speculation anyway, no matter the source. As an scientist-turned-engineer, I'd want to record as much data as possible before it blows up, and if it is still within the safe zone, why not wait a bit... Additionally, can you imagine the engineers all looking at their real-time data trying to see if they can spot the problem? These self-destruct decisions are quick, but not instantaneous.
I assumed they were letting it get to an even safer area before destroying it.. It seems like their flight termination system should be required to be near instantaneous
@@jonslg240 14 CFR Chapter III - COMMERCIAL SPACE TRANSPORTATION, FEDERAL AVIATION ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION, Appendix D to Part 417 - Flight Termination Systems, Components, Installation, and Monitoring says this: Flight termination system functional requirements: (a) When a flight safety system terminates the flight of a vehicle because it has either violated a flight safety rule as defined in § 417.113 or the vehicle inadvertently separates or destructs as described in section D417.11, a flight termination system must: (1) Render each propulsion system that has the capability of reaching a populated or other protected area, incapable of propulsion, without significant lateral or longitudinal deviation in the impact point. This includes each stage and any strap on motor or propulsion system that is part of any payload; (2) Terminate the flight of any inadvertently or prematurely separated propulsion system capable of reaching a populated or other protected area; (3) Destroy the pressure integrity of any solid propellant system to terminate all thrust or ensure that any residual thrust causes the propulsion system to tumble without significant lateral or longitudinal deviation in the impact point; and (4) Disperse any liquid propellant, whether by rupturing the propellant tank or other equivalent method, and initiate burning of any toxic liquid propellant. (b) A flight termination system must not cause any solid or liquid propellant to detonate. (c) The flight termination of a propulsion system must not interfere with the flight termination of any other propulsion system.
@@cerealport2726 There wasn't a human in the loop. SpaceX has an autonomous fright termination system. They started using it for Falcon 9 a few years ago, and Starship inherited it. But the same principle still applies. It might simply see the tumbling as acceptable. Particularly since this is a vehicle which is *supposed* to make a pitch-over maneuver around that point in the flight.
I was about 20 miles east of this when my coworker looked over and was like. "The hell is going on over there?". I was wondering what was going on as well. lol.
Considering this thing was moving at 7 miles per second, and it took 50 seconds for the self-destruct to function effectively, you probably should have been slightly more concerned!
The force on the tumbling rocket are much smaller. It was at 30km, where the air density is only 1,3% of sea level. Furthermore, the centrifugal force is very small, and finally the engine thrust direction is still (apart from gimballing, which it is designed for) straight through the CG. So overall I am not surprised it held up even while tumbling and going sideways.
One could therefore suggest that the rocket is structurally over-engineered and some weight can be saved once the forces on it during its mission are fully known 😊
There is a picture of the booster and ship which started to bend... But if the FTS was already initiated, this is probably due to loss of pressure inside the tanks. So that is pretty impressive it held up even after the FTS
@@frankgennon1Kerbal space program, a pretty realistic rocket game where you shoot little green men called Kerbals into space with the most outrageous and impossible rockets ever. They either make it to their destination, or much like the video, blow up because you turned a little too far.
Having seen hundreds of rockets blow up after going about ten degrees off axis, I am amazed to see how Starship was able to tumble like that and survive.
Exactly, the flight termination system was built to break the weak spots of an rocket, so the external and internal forces would tear apart the rocket instantly. And the starship didn't just took a second max Q while spinning at such speeds, it also did those cartwheels with holes in the tanks. And I hope that the FTS would be better with the next ships considering what happened in the first flight.
@@thelastwoltzer No, it couldn't have hit the ground in one piece. Within about one minute, the rocket was over the Gulf of Mexico and remained over the water throughout its entire flight. The nearest land in its flight path was Africa. By the time it traveled that far, it'd have been in low earth orbit, and its ballistic trajectory would have carried it across Africa to crash into the Pacific on the other side. They are performing these tests specifically to identify points of failure. Those results will be used to eliminate those weaknesses (points of failure) in future iterations. That is the whole point of _any_ product testing campaign. There isn't a person involved in the program that didn't openly acknowledge they need to beef up the FTS within the first couple of hours of the test. _Everyone_ was amazed that the FTS they installed couldn't take out the ship. There is no intelligent person who would install more high explosives on the largest rocket ever made than would be necessary for a successful flight termination (aside from the ~+10% "safety" margin).
@@darrennew8211having protected habitats around a rocket launch site is big brain move And a big burocracy trap to get SpaceX or any other who attempt to launch a rocket to never do it
@@darrennew8211😂 I mean protecting them doesn't necessarily make them important. Liberals will literally protect amount of shit if a goose lays an egg on it.
@@darrennew8211 I don't know man, common sense environmentalist. We sure as hell can't sacrifice the environment for progress but at the same time we can't stifel progress over the chance that some birds might get got. If their nesting ground small enough that this incident put their entire species at danger maybe it's their time
@@ronhenry2025 Is it really Murphy's Law if you are told that a decision to not have flame diverters will greatly increase the risk of damage to the rocket and then it does when you don't install them?
@@rainfall2880 I guess, it wasn't going that fast though... started to tumble at 2 minutes in, going 1800 km/h. That's a paltry 500 m/s, whereas the shuttle is typically going 1200+ at that time. Thats not to say starship is bad, just that aerodynamic forces are heavily influenced by both AoA and speed, so to say its strong, I say we cant really tell yet, tumbling at mach 1is way different then tumbling at mach 4..
What people aren't told is these are considered testing launches and they will eventually get it done. But the normal person including myself have not a clue what is involved in something of this magnitude and complicated engineering to take on a seemingly impossible feat as they are doing ... Positivity and amazing appreciation for what your doing from everyone , everywhere ! ❤
Notice the likes on this common sense approach? You are absolutly correct. This was all success. If there actually was a 50 second delay . So what? No real danger. Lots of tech stuff to be gained. And the self destruct did work.
SpaceX engineers, and welders should be very proud of their work. That rocket went through a lot of stresses, and passed with impressive results, before being terminated. Congratulations!
@@twinkieerella They use robotic welders... to make the rings and join them since quite awhile now, any human welding is non structural I think due to the requirements....
I wonder how those engineers feel about their work being tested to such extremes when NASA were successfully launching rockets 60 years ago... I'd be pissed, it's 2023 and spacex seem to be making a mockery of rocketry.
I noticed it had lost ~ 9 KM in altitude before actually exploding .... this, I'd assume, needs to be addressed too. Seems to me a large delay is a potentially large problem.
@@InuHost great design and progress with development, given the history of NASA's Apollo program, with at least one mission that exploded with astronauts on board
Why do you give a shit? Also not for nothing but it’s obvious it couldn’t land so I’d much prefer it blow up at 30miles(or was it I’m?) than crash somewhere uncontrolled
Considering that starship is being designed to safely abort a crew cabin, a delayed detonation of the booster will be beneficial time for the cabin to get away.
Honestly I was surprised most by the fact that it didnt just collapse as soon as it started cartwheeling. I wouldnt have guessed it would be able to withstand those kinds of lateral forces with the full stack still stuck together.
It was made of a stronger steel construction rather than the aluminum alloy found on previous rocket designs. A system such as the Saturn V would have buckled seconds into that tumble and ruptured the tanks and cause a massive explosion.
A comment above from one of the engineers on the team (limited info likely due to an NDA), outlined that the stage connector collar could withstand forces up to 3.5g, another commenter observed that atmospheric pressure is 1.5% of surface pressure, both of which are likely factors in how the rocket didn't bend. Another observation made was the FTS charge that blasts an object through the fuel tanks to cause the fuel to detonate was set to go off automatically, but it hadn't in order for more flight data to be recorded from the ground, then the killswitch got flipped when they got their data.
@Acey785 Yeah, people have to remember that they are supposed to be reusable. You have to imagine that they will have similar empty/low pressure tank potential during future landings, and ideally land and be quickly reusable.
Why do I get a feeling that everyone commenting here is an Indian? Only indians celebrate failures. Praising that it took so long to explode. Next you'll congratulate SpaceX that no one died from the explosion. Geez, America is indeed turning into little India. A 4th world country.
@@Acey785 those NDA documents are one of the first things you sign before anything they gaurd proprietary intellectual trade secrets like you have no idea.
I thought that the flight termination system was usually a linear charge running along the entire length of the stage. So it doesn't just punch a hole - it tears open the entire side of the tank so that aerodynamic forces will rip it apart immediately. I am not familiar with this particular rocket but most of them use a linear charge.
Thats not the case with spacex. What you saw in this video is accurate. It just uses a small linear shaped charge to punch a hole. Works fine on a Falcon 9....obviously its time to rethink for starship.
You are correct! That's the way they used to do it. It would basically unzip the entire rocket. The old school way is much more effective in my opinion.
That's how it's made on Ariane 5 for example. A rocket is far more sturdy that we might think, and destroying it properly is not that simple. It seem that on this cases the flight termination system is not very good at it, this is bad for a flight with such a high probability of failure.
The issues are the debris, this is stainless remember, by creating destructive detonation within the tanks as opposed to externally it will reduce a lot of the dangerous debris that can fall to earth uncontrolled.....
I believe what happened was not a violation of any rules -- flight termination regs don't require the destruction of the rocket; they're more concerned with making sure it hits the ground within the prescribed zone
So terminating a rocket by blowing relatively small holes in the side wall may not be the optimal solution. Multiple charges around the circumference of the hull may be more effective.
@@davidf2281 But how to ensure it lands in the zone if during real launch it may suddenly start accelerating to outside the zone, and you don't have any capability to blow it up.
Even with the rigidity provided by pressurized tanks, I was very impressed that Super Heavy and Starship remained relatively intact while doing a few supersonic somersaults.
@@SPACECOWBOY_Hej - True. Not much air density, but the rocket was tumbling while in supersonic flight which places great stresses on the structure. In the recent Starship analysis, Elon commented that the displayed structural performance well exceeded design limits. He also said that they need to revise the flight termination system because the tanks were perforated as planned but the Starship and Super Heavy remained intact until they tumbled to a lower atmosphere where it was destroyed by the forces imposed by the increased air density.
@@Liberty4Ever Not surprising that Musk extolled the virtues of the rocket during it's failure, that's his modus operandi - often when avoiding a reasonable question. It also doesn't necessarily mean it's true.
I think the biggest unasserted question is why engines shut down due to safety issues during liftoff/flight, but when they specifically were supposed to cutoff right before the flip started they didn't. If you rewatch the livestream the controller calls out for main engine cutoff right before the flip starts but the engines never cut. Thats said this is itself interesting as well.
Because that was not the time to decouple yet, I think they didn't reach enough altitude due to early and progressively worsening engine loss with lack of gimbaling. If they actually tried to flip it then maybe they didn't have enough gimbal left to hold the flip.
@@TheNheg66 I think you've completely misunderstood what i'm saying. Regardless of weather the flip was commanded or not, the engines were supposed to be cut-off by the time it started. The fact that the ground controller called out the supposed cutoff but it never actually happened is the big standout here.
You're assuming that it was supposed to flip under those circumstances - which seems unlikely, given that it was far short of the altitude and velocity at which staging should occur. I suspect it's just coincidence that the already-failing rocket happened to go out of control at roughly the same time at which staging would have occurred had things been going to plan.
@@simongeard4824 Again doesn't matter, the engines should have cut before that point because the controller specifically called out main engine cutoff.
No the self destruct worked as expected. it was so high, there wasn't enough friction around it in the atmosphere, while it was travelling about mach4, supersonic fires are incredibly hard to ignite. But, they know at about 6 miles high, there is enough air resistance, made to push against, more heterogeneous oxygen, and now at speeds more conduce to fire, or more specifically, deflagration. With the compromised structure, the air resistance and pressurised gasses causes a fast tumble, which will always rip a plane or rocket apart, causing the deflagration. the self destruct sequence worked, it just had to drop 3 miles first. The reason we see this happen very quickly, to normal rockets, it's because they're built with aluminium alloy, and are strengthened and braces in 1 axis (vertical), they are single use and only need to strengthen the rocket one way. whereas the star ship is a steel alloy and it's bracing and strength are unmatched, simple because, to reuse it, it falls back down at terminal V, then 'belly flops' to bleed a load of speed off. Any other rocket, that was subjected to that side loading, would self destruct without instruction or explosives.. Anyways I know that was long, it was much longer than I planned anyway, hope it makes sense. Stay safe n have a Good day.
@@old_seadog no, just took longer than what we know as usual self destructs we see. Imagine the starship was a semi and normal rockets are light weight sports cars. Both can do an emergency stop, it just takes longer for the truck, *That doesn't mean it's brakes malfunctioned* it's just working under Newtons, conservation of momentum.
@@renagenic That's odd. Usually when a self destruct system operates, you'd expect it to destroy itself immediately, not at some random point because it failed to do its job properly. Then again, it's a Musk stunt isn't it, so we shouldn't be surprised at another failure.
Yeah, their coverage was bizarre and useless. It felt like a display of shallow near-cultish hype, which apparently people buy into. They've always been a bit like this, but this coverage was next level.
@@dondutch4107 usually we don't know it's a mistake until it's a failure, but I know what you mean lol. ✌ As for luck yeah we don't learn anything if we just ride our luck and it's wrong yet we keep doing it but eventually it will go wrong.
@@venturestar no, but imagine that rocket had taken off in a wrong direction away from the ocean, and travelled 50 seconds before blowing up, it could be waaaay outside of the safety zone and drop debris on observers or on people's homes (as I understand, this launch site is quite close to some settlements).
@@Ass_of_Amalek and imagine the damage if they just detonated it on the launchpad :^) i *think* spaceX is relatively good at launching a rocket in the right direction by this point :D
@@scubajoe3321 They can say this but it's not an excuse. If it's not going to takeoff at all than why do it. That's like competing in a competion and using the excuse that you didn't want to win.
The FTS is a shaped charge that will blast a 50kg plate through the barrel sections, thus blasting holes on either side of the tank. The venting that can be seen is exactly that, venting due to over pressure in the tanks as the LM and LOX slosh around and boil. The FTS was allowed to detonate automatically, as we wanted to get as much data from the vehicle as possible during the anomaly
@@stellaviatorem8406 cool! Thanks for clearing that up. We'd be delighted if you could provide such expertise in the future to explain what happens on future test flights. 😃
Were you or any of the engineers surprised by how long the two parts stayed together and maintained apparent rigidity while tumbling? A mentor of mine was an Apollo rocket scientist (physicist/EE working on the IMU and for BelComm), and he would have been utterly amazed. Blew my mind for sure!!!!
@@BackYardScience2000 After working on Starship for over 3 years I would be happy to. However there will be some things I cant cant talk about due to ITAR and corporate secrets requirements. No disrespect to Scott . There are other videos that show the FTS blowing the booster and then Starship. Lots of data. we need water cooled steel plates under the OLM or a flame diverter.
How nice. My comment caught a real vatnik. Brains like herrings they are so easy to catch, so easy to get them to post stupid comments. This time it took a while but finally one got in the net.
When I worked at a rocket startup in the mid-80's, I interfaced with the range safety officers. Our design was a solid propellant ( polybutadiene+carbon, LOx pressurized (400psi) by helium (8,000psi) ), and the flight termination system was pyrotechnics that attempted to cutup the booster. The RSO was very concerned we would have 3 or 4 very large ( several tons ) objects falling, when they were used to terminating vehicles that were power with hydrazine. When they terminated the flight, 100's of thousands of tiny pieces would rain down. Low potential energy ( mgh ) because the mass of the tiny pieces is so small.
The failure was caused on the ground. The engines obliterated the takeoff pad and numerous thousand-pound pieces of concrete beat the heck out of the bottom of the rocket before it ever left the pad. It was a sad end to a great effort, but they will fix this and will do much better next time. The torsional strength of the rockets body is very impressive here. That it stayed in one piece so long is actually a tribute to the power of the engines continuing to provide massive upward thrust through all the motions to keep upward pressure on all of the rocket sections joints. Really amazing sequence captured in video.
It is one tough rocket, though every early flight of a type is going to be a learning opportunity. A lot of data analysis and stage 0 work to be done, but they'll get it right. Looking forward to the next one.
Not really... it wasn't in any danger of going outside the approved flight corridor, so at no point was there any danger that required the FTS to be triggered.
@@simongeard4824 errr. I think the point is if it _had_ gone in the wrong direction. Looking at what happened on the pad who knows what might have happened. Not cool.
@@Danuxsy because the flight termination system kicked in already, making a hole in the fuel tank. It wasn't until it hit the more oxygen rich lower atmosphere it could explode
Well spotted! I remember seeing those lateral plumes but assumed they were some form of RCS. Totally makes sense that they fired but didn't cause detonation of the tanks' contents. Lots of learnings from this.
Flight termination systems usually do not result in combustion, that's why you see the white plum with little fire. I don't think scott is right here, even less considering that starship has FTS separated to super heavy and it was evident when it was activated.. SpaceX probably didn't do it for more data, or in hopes of regaining control.
There was no "detonation" of the fuel/O2. It's probably impossible to get a supersonic explosion wave-front in it. There wasn't an explosion when Challenger came apart, there isn't an explosion behind a bullet inside a cartridge case.
@@darkmatter1152 No, not even then. It is not a supersonic propagating overpressure shock front even from modern nitro gunpowder. Some sources define an "explosion" so that popping a party balloon or paper bag qualifies, but no.
What it shows is the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING ENGINEERING that kept this vehicles structural integrity.. If I was going up in this ship it would give me great confidence to see that even when the experts try to blow the thing to bits with actual explosives the thing still will not go down... I would just like to say that Elon and the great team he has assembled the world is watching quietly...& what you have achieved blows the mind, the future is BRIGHT.
@@rolletroll2338 my point is, the guys who welded and assembled the chassis were solid - maybe not the software engineers or line that built the CPU boards lmao.
@@JuliusCaesar888 I was referring to the termination system. We can assume this was not well designed, it is far tow small to destroy efficiency a rocket of such size.
I feel like that's a pretty non-ideal flight termination system. Usually it seems like you want it to donate pretty much instantly so it doesn't keep building up speed
Honestly, if it's going to land anywhere near anyone, you may not want it raining down in a billion pieces and have localized damage instead of a whole city-sized area peppered with rocket parts that could be quite big and/or in fire.
I don’t think Scott is doing a good job on this analysis. He missed a lot and asserted his claims as fact when they were at best, pure speculation. There’s no good reason to conclude in this specific case that the two primary detonations were not directly caused by FTS charges. The two new vents may have been an earlier part of an FTS sequence. Would make sense to vent the tanks and release pressure before detonating to avoid a nuclear sized fireball. [EDIT: I mean his analysis of this entire flight in general is pretty sketchy, not just this one video.]
@@jordanhenshaw there are two very good reasons: 1. the rocket explosion started from the engines, so it couldn't be possibly caused by the FTS. 2. you could see the FTS activating before the explosion, and failing to detonate the rocket.
the fire dragon needs a massive re-design makeover so that it can land Flat like the shuttle, most engineers may have discussed the problem to deaf ears, especially if they planning to blast people to the red planet.
More simple answer: Because they had a golden opportunity to work the problem and try different solutions! They chose to do that instead of destroy their active opportunity.
I’m so glad you brought this up. I had the same question, but thought maybe they hesitated to get more engine data. Also, shouldn’t the FTS actually destroy the vehicle? I thought the purpose was to break it into smaller pieces and consume propellant in a safer manner. Just poking holes in it without a boom could be very problematic at low altitude.
This rocket has so much stored energy shortly after launch that any flight termination system is going to be problematic at low altitude. Depending on what's going wrong it might be safer not to use it right away. Given the damage sustained to the rocket after ignition but before liftoff you have to wonder if it was safer to let it lift off if it still had enough engines rather than shutdown and sit on the pad fully fuelled with broken engines and unknown damage or leaks. Clearly they had a preference for launching with failed engines rather than aborting and swapping engines. Maybe they modeled the potential pad damage and decided that once lit this was their only chance to fly.
"hey...this rocket is coming at us" -> "no worries, it will self destruct" -> "oh good...any time now, right?" -> "well...can take 50sec" -> "well...uhh...we dead".
The resilience of the spacecraft is quite impressive. Despite the fact that stage 1 was let's say badly damaged, it was able to survive for some time. Gives hope that a crewed Starship had quite a bit of time to perform a launch abort scenario.
@Michael Beemer lol. The man can't deliver anything on time, let alone deliver 100 people to Mars. At some point, NASA have to pull the plug when they realise Starship will never get beyond LEO. When they do, all his cash vanishes.
A fueled, laden "Starship" is not an escape vehicle capable of ~1.5 seconds of 8G. There won't be a crew in a starship, unless they put them, in a capsule with such an escape system capable of zero-zero to hypersonic sub-orbital safe escape.
@@JFrazer4303 neither was the shuttle. Think about your comment for a bit. This won’t be the largest rocket ever built. As they do get larger, the practicality of small abort vehicles reduces dramatically. Starship is the abort vehicle for the crew. There is no other alternative for the stack as designed.
From what I can see, the flight termination regs are not concerned with _destroying_ the rocket; only terminating the flight within the safe area. And D417.3 para (b) says: _A flight termination system must not cause any solid or liquid propellant to detonate._ So it seems to me that the FTS worked as designed?
Detonate is not the same thing as explode or burn. It has a specific scientific meaning based on things like flame front speed, Google detonate vs explode.
It was already interesting to see it’s progression through the previous gain in, when the rupture occurred, the direction altered no alternate conditions.
Well, Stage Zero, definitely got "Smoked" and that "Joint" is going to not just "Buff Out!" Tank Farm is (as we saw) right inside the Danger Zone! So, maybe it needs a "Wall" about 20 Feet Thick, of High Strength Concrete, with a Titanium Skin, between the Tanks, and the Launch Pad? Also, skipping installation of a well designed Flame Deflector, was a bigger expense Generator, than they imagined! 😢
@@robertweekley5926 I agree with most of this except titanium. It doesn't have to be light, it's a wall, they already have welders. Just slap some steel into it.
Yup, like how China wiped out an entire village of 1000+ people with a failed satellite launch then proceeded to cover up the deaths and erase the village from their maps
Ok, now we understand the rocket survived not only concrete shrapnel, engines on fire and exploding, flips at enormous speed, but even FTS explosions. That's just mind blowing, seems like we've got really tough rocket here, and it's only first flight.
