SpaceX's Plan To Change & Prevent Future Pad Damage 

My guess is all of them, in one way or another.

That doesnt make a lot of sense. How is debris going to overcome the force of the engines?

@@trequor flying around.

@scottmanley thinks at least two immediately and cascading damage to the rest.

@@trequor The force of the engines was driving the debris at great speed and some probably went into the engine housing at great speed on the outer edge of the rocket thrust and ricocheted about inside striking unshielded components. The other problem is the extreme sound that NASA uses water to reduce. SpaceX cut corners, ergo haste makes waste.

Yes, the astronauts can fully enjoy the reality of their fate before the self - destruct! (Just saying!!) But I do agree it is nice it held together for as long as it did. And, yes I know they will devise an escape system, I hope.

That was a positive.

@Dan P SpaceX prefers to learn through frequent testing and failure. That’s how they perfected the Falcon so quickly.

​@NostradamusJr. The G forces on existing stored propellant in starship caused a bending moment force.

​@@HayK47 Yeah I guess "Mars colonization" will also go through a lot of test and failures and many deaths. If it fails Elon will simply move on to the next techno scam and if it succeeds Elon gets his own extraterritorial prison for dumb millionaire Muskfans.

I know what caused damage to the rocket its the concrete beeing turn appart and flying everywhere that hit engines and other critical parts under the rocket.... as soon Space X turned the power to 100% it created a huge hole and many camera show concrete flying like 500 metere away in the see, destroying cars and simply everything.

Or it could have just been bad valves, or failed circuitry, totally unrelated to concrete. A system this complex could have multiple points of failure completely separate from each other.

@@phlippbergamot5723 There _is_ a bit of a question mark there, actually. The hydraulic system on the side, which went poof during ascent. It looks pre-damaged before it blows up. But because they're never going to use such a system again, we'll probably never know exactly what happened.

The pad literally exploded as sent debris flying…. But the rocket exhaust could’ve prevented this from flying back into the rockets…. But with all that energy, who know what caused it exactly.

@@pyropulseIXXI Yep, from the video footage there were several cameras showing a car being totaled from the debris hundreds of meters away, and then there were visible chunks being throw into the ocean even further from the drone footage. It was like a massive bomb went off under the pad and it still took off and hit maxQ. That thing is a wonder of engineering and will definitely stand up to rapid reuse in ideal launch and recovery conditions.

They didn't forget about it... Why would you make that assumption?

Those two severely dented tanks were empty. One held water.

Always surprised by the close proximity of those things, but what do I know! Obviously the benefit must outweigh the risk.

Most of that damage was to the insulator shell.. not the tank. The tanks are easily rebuilt, as they are made from the same stainless steel rings used for Superheavy/Starship.

They are a private company, they don't have to report anything

@@hankkingsley9183 point being?

And the fan boy banter and giggles doesn’t pay reverence and respect to what is a very serious and dangerous business. They act like it’s all a video game.

150 ton rocket* :)

@@Joh00226 5,000 ton rocket*

You do realize engineers "rocket scientists" have RU-vid access as well right? Just saying I'm 100 percent confident they have internet access and don't live in a cave (at least not full-time). So you never know who comments.

@@That_Awesome_Guy1 ye but starship is 150ton is it not ?

@@Joh00226 It's 5,000 tons when fully fueled isn't it?

And the Soyuz don't even need water, which is a huge plus. However, Soyuz is orders of magnitude less powerful, so I'm not sure how far this can be scaled up. In addition, a pit in this area is going to flood from the shallow water table, but perhaps a layer of water in of itself is what the pad needs to survive. Unfortunately, water absorbs the sound and heat best when it is airborne like when used in a deluge system.

The Sojus Launch Mount at Baikonur has a sizeable hole below it and then an angled structure designed to divert flames to about 180 degrees of free space (actually unobstructed)... SpaceX just blasted the ground with 33 Raptor engines expecting to not destroy it... Also the launch mount itself takes up much space where flames could go if there would not be the structure... I'd put the tank farm behind the tower, having as much space to divert flames to as possible whilst protecting the tanks against debris... Then scrap the legs, build the platform on a kind of bridge, take free space below to divert flames away from the tower to about 180 degrees of free space, maybe even similar to Baikonur for even more space directly surrounding the exhaust area...

@@derewe2094 cool bro, you go do that.

Thats not damage. Its an excavation in preparation for the pad upgrade

and this is not the first time , in 2016 when falcon 9 exploded they also skip solution that nasa invented decades ago. This happened because Elon is an Idiot and as always, knows better and stupid look on his face in space center after the explosion, tells everything.

The weak point was not waiting for the blast suppression systems

Would probably take off a little faster with all 33 engines alive. ;)

@@russellharrell2747 The weakest point is not testing to failure, doh.

Unfortunately Starship was empty no payload and probably not fully fueled. So maybe need a few or a lot more engines??

@@gregb1599 it was fully fueled. It takes that entire super heavy to get fully fueled to lift starship to orbit and then boost back and soft landing. Starship then had to re-enter and belly flop into the water.

Remember that this pad survived a test fire with thrust equivalent to a Saturn V launch.

@@jimdyer9455 Well they learned a lesson didn't they. Don't try to reinvent a very successful design. The previous test must have damaged the launch pad.

Actually that's a good idea, it would save wasting fuel by exploding whilst in the water.

salt is a problem

EPA would get on their ass for all the wildlife it would kill each launch. Sound travels very far through water.

How to mess up all whales in a 500 mile radius

Launch SpaceX from underground, just like a nuclear silo. Fewer debris impact to the surrounding.

It's amazing how much the space crew can get done working 24/7. In fact that was likely the message from this launch. B7 S24 seems to be saying you better work 24/7 so you can fix everything that went wrong on my flight!! 😂😅

He will be calling you any minute now, just wait 😅

​@@HNedelyou laugh...but he might just..contrary to what the juice of elon's perineum forces you to believe, Elon has minimal involvement in any designing...mainly because he is a man-child with buckets of money. That is his influence. He IS smart enough to call the real geniuses and buys their brains to do it.

@@daTribbleMaker wait wait wait… which one is it? - Musk is stupid and micromanages everything and gets involved in things he has no clue about - Musk is stupid but smart enough not to get involved and leaves the work to the experts Pick one, you can’t have both. Either he decides everything and decided against a flame diverter and deluge system against the advice of his experts, or he let the experts do what they want and they are the ones who decided against flame diverters…

@Dan P yuh. By means of a Flight Termination System. Not on its own. That's what I had meant.

Exactly .. more height, PLUS a rebuildable diverter.. like NASA installed at 39B. It's silly that SpaceX hasn't learned from NASA, how to build something that will hold up.

@@KrustyKlown I doubt it's going to hold and divert all that energy. 30+ engines is something that's going to require rethinking about how many should be active at launch

I agree. more height, water deluge, & the separation clamp issue resolved for next test w/be great. plus we can all look forward to seeing the SpaceX launch pad at Cape Canaveral in few yrs, with all their learning here & now. hopefully a flame diverter will be part of the planning which is well needed for the mighty 33.

@@danp576 The location is required the issue is that the raptors are too powerful with too much energy being expelled.

​@Dan P You essentially gotta build close to the equator and on the east coast.

If you look at the N1 rocket for example, weren't basically all of the failures caused by engine issues and/or the flight computers' reactions to it?

​@@StragTacGaming Seems like there were many issues beyond the engines and flight systems for N!. wiki says pogo oscillation started failure cascade in 1st test, excessive dynamic loads caused by a hydraulic shock wave precipitating bad stuff in the 4th. Suffice it to say N1 was a mess and in no way comparable to super heavy which showed how resilient it was after eating a bunch of concrete sandwiches for breakfast lol

If they raise the launch table they will also have to lift the tower as well. I think that is too much work and delay for this pad. Maybe for future builds. Perhaps this is why work on the other towers has been halted of late. Maybe Elon wanted a non-improved stage zero for this launch to get a baseline for damage. He said this rocket was already outdated and expendable. He thinks in big terms and well ahead of current events. He looked completely unfazed after the event. Despite the damage done to the rocket's control systems by the pad, this booster/ship combo survived surprisingly well and maintained its structural integrity right to the end despite the gigantic forces put on it by the tumbling and only had to be blown up due to loss of control and separation. That's mighty impressive. This is speculation but without the pad damage this flight may well have completed its mission very well. I think this test bodes well for the future.

For raising the pad and tower, I’d say Labor Day , 2024.

They're the fans of a plan to sustain thousands of ppl in Mars by hauling $hit ton of supplies in rockets, for no goddamn reason. Clearly they don't give a damn about the environment.

I can't wait either but you'll have to wait a few additional years because of Elon's incomitance. The launch pad design should have never been approved. He approved it, he's responsible for the cost overruns, the redesign and the multi-year delay to the Artemis program. Stope licking this man child's boots. He's got to go IMO.

Gotta have a market for it. So far I haven’t heard what the starship is supposed to do other than fly to mars. Is this thing supposed to launch satellites or ferry people to space stations or?

Gotta love a hater when u see it. If Elon musk was in the labb himself and created a cure for everything Keith would probly find a way to bash him anyway :D this TEST was a major success and nothing else. Anybody that knows anything about spacerockets knows that the absolut first test 99% of the time it Will blow up before its future goal is meet

@@russellharrell2747 it is suppose to take nasa to the moon in 2 years

@@Joh00226 SLS has already taken NASA back to the moon. The last flight swung around moon, the next flight will send people. NASA doesn’t need the starship, they have their own heavy lift vehicle and they don’t have plans to fly often enough to justify using the starship as well, not to mention they would need a budget increase for the contract to use starship.

I think NASA launch pad is the ultime one

The tiles are made of ceramic and are extremely light like styrofoam.

They are only lame brained when they say something that disagrees with your ideology? This was a failure. No bootlicking will change the fact that instead of listening to those that KNEW what would happen if the pad wasn't redesigned they went forward as is ANYWAY! Sure data was gathered, as would any launch successful or not always presents data. BUT this Edison mindset way of going about doing this is absurd. Consider how much MORE DATA would have been gathered had they had a real successful launch. Bet you would be praising the "lame brain journalists" then.

Actually, i believe after the static fire, they completely replaced the fondag clear to the soil. Also, they actually allowed it time to cure properly lol, which they didnt do enough (barely within bare minimum for trucks to drive on) for the static test.

The eight seconds was planned and announced, and that's what it took, then it started climbing away. Unfortunately, a lot of damage had already been done with the flying concrete.

How come people can’t spell lose?

Clearly, Musk's hopes are not based on sound reasoning. He needs to let the engineers take the lead and stop forcing them to cut corners to meet his arbitrary and too ambitious timelines.

​@@thomasrudder9639 Beecaws wee are losers.

@@thomasrudder9639 Its perfectly understandable that two words (lose and loose) that are spelled similarly, pronounced almost exactly the same and have somewhat overlapping or similar meanings can be difficult to distinguish for people. Especially when english isnt the primary language for many.

Does not need a flame trench: a flat steel plate cooled by water would be enough tp protect the concrete underneath. There's plenty of vent space around the stand legs.

@@paullangford8179 Maybe flame duct may redirect the flame to a desired area, instead of flame destroying cars or anything else 360 degrees 1K feet away .

​@Colin Southern The dumbest people are the most loudest and judgiest

​@@colinsouthern I guess Elon has plenty of money to burn on crappy launch pads and recyclable rockets, yolo.

@@colinsouthernyou are just making excuses for Musk being too damn impatient and believing he is right. The static engine test showed that the other pad lasted 7 seconds with the engines not at full thrust. A smart person would know that at full thrust, the damage would the damage would be much greater and happen sooner. According to Musk, the water cooled system will be finished and ready to install in about a month. So wouldn’t it be better to wait a month, then have a successful launch rather than having your rocket blow up? Maybe it was an older one, but there is no way of knowing if the next version is actually better. It seems that Musk and his fanboys love to say untested equipment is an upgrade/improvement. And there is the public’s reaction, even more important, the government’s opinion. Musk is pretty free and easy when he is getting billions in funding, grants, and tax credits from the tax payers. WTF is a multi billionaire getting help from the government? We got people sleeping in the streets, and others afraid to go out on the streets, yet we waste money on useless space travel and help a billionaire live out his boyhood dreams. Sorry for the much needed rant, back to you fanboys protecting Musk. Musk saying he was happy to destroy the rocket because it was old, is just an excuse for screwing things up in the first place. Maybe not an excuse, more like how a cat acts after they screwed up and fell off of something. They act like they meant to do that, just remain chill and look as if everything is normal. I am waiting to see what he says when the water cooled system fails and the next rocket blows up. Probably that they had already made more advances and hoped that the rocket would explode and that they needed to test the new water cooled system. And all of you fanboys will just nod and say that it makes sense to you.

this was nearly the conclusion of proof of concept. so many milestones passed and spacex sorta just wanted to get this one out of the way. there are already more advanced versions of starship in production with at least two alternative types of second stage separation mechanism. i'd say the third time will be the charm, but they might get away with two before moving from alpha to beta. launching to 39km on 420 is legendary. never think that the date wasn't intentional. i suspect the first countdown deferment also :) light 'em if ya got 'em

Don't have time to do it right, but have time to do it twice. So many should have seen that coming that the launch should never have been allowed by the FAA.

Agreed. And now he has real data from a real launch. Future towers and tables will be improved accordingly.

Im not sure what you mean exactly but it sounds like you think it needed something beneath it to 'push' off and the destruction below meant the starship didnt have anything to push on to lift itself. Thats a not uncommon misunderstanding: rockets do not require anything, be it air or a surface, to push on to launch. It could launch in complete vacuum.

You know absolutely nothing about the aerodynamic and structural forces it was being subjected to so why do you think you're qualified to comment? For your information there is practically no atmosphere at that altitude so there is nothing impressive about it staying in one piece while it tumbled out of control.

​@@zognaldblormpf5127 first of all, there is still a lot of atmosphere at 39km. Even then, the structural stress of it spinning like that with full thrust and a fully loaded Starship on top is immense. You can watch Scott Manley's video on it. It was under extreme forces. Did you even think your comment through before the Dunning-Kruger effect made a big dent on you?

@@zognaldblormpf5127 You're the one who is absolutely unqualified to comment lmao. For your information there is a lot of fucking atmosphere at 39km, not even talking about the massive forces the ship exerted on itself. Can't let other people be happy just have to spread your own misery.

@@beamed5382 I did some rough math and the dynamic pressures would be around the same as 250mph at sea level. Not super extreme, but not nothing either.

@@zognaldblormpf5127 I just said MY favorite takeaway, I'm qualified to say what that is I'm pretty sure. You are right I have almost no knowledge of rocket science but that doesn't mean I couldn't be impressed by the strength of the vehicle. Not trying to enflame anyone, just was excited to watch that crazy launch. Sorry if I'm not a good space fan

What stabilizer are you referring to?

The grid fins do not retract on Super Heavy like they do on F9. They are always "deployed", all 4 of them.

My guess is the hold-down clamps for a 100% test would need to be enormous.

Interesting, if the rocket can lift off with less raptors, why not next time use 2 stagea firing sequence. 1st fire with 22 engins then the rest kick in once it clear the tower.

@@alee8479 because not only would that sequence not work with a payload, but you need the most power the closer you are to earth where the gravity is strongest and the atmosphere is most dense or your wasting energy.

@@alee8479 Because the rocket is heaviest at launch, it sat there for 6 seconds because it was too heavy to lift off with missing engines. After 6 seconds of burn the rocket was 120 tons lighter and then the thrust could lift the rocket.

So, about a year?

Kinda like his timeline for Fool Self Driving but who’s counting. But why did they not wait a month or two and get some of the improvements in and probably get some useful data from starship? Now it will ultimately take longer to get to the starship data. Even on the next launch they will not get to the really difficult issues that need to be sorted out. Seems like a significantly suboptimal use of time with the serious possibility of blowing up stage zero.

​@@Mentaculus42 I think they really wanted to know how the current base designs on the ship and booster were going to hold up before they continue building new ships and boosters. I agree that they probably just set themselves back further than if they would have waited to install the deluge/flame diverter.

@@dr4d1s I agree, but it was rather obvious that stage zero wasn’t just going to kinda just squeak by. So that leads to the question of who said no to the changes. Clearly whoever was calling the overall game plan on this (with a significant negative outcome) probably has equal control over other more significant design aspects of the rocket. One can be lucky but sooner than later the luck will hit a speed bump. As far as this launch went, their luck is doing pretty good.

I hear speculations that debris from pad damaged pneumatic lines needed for separation. Simply 3 engines gets smashed before lift of, that was miracle that after getting pepper by all this debris cleared launchpad. Also LOX tank develop leak during ascend most liekly due damgae, you can see it on feed.

Despite the comments on the SpaceX stream I don't think the Starship ever achieved the required elevation/speed required for stage separation. The commentators were likely using only the timer based on ideal flight performance, but with the reduced number of engines in service the vehicle was not able to follow the ideal flight profile.

The video from "inside" the interstage showed no sign of movement from the locks that would release the connection. I suspect loss of hydraulics from the damage.

@@paullangford8179 Separation cannot happen unless/until all booster engines are shut down....which they never did (prior to flight termination).

Apparently Elon didn’t want a flame diverter because building one on mars would be really frickin hard. Still stupid though. Every scientist at spacex was probably dying inside knowing the damage this was gonna (and did) cause. Elon gets shit done, but he can be pretty dumb sometimes.

This is what spaceX does though, they constantly take risks. Some pay off, some don't. People laughed at them for 2 years straight when they put legs on the Falcon 9 booster, noone is laughing about it now, they are all desperately trying to catch up, 8 years later and noone is even close. But not all risk taking pays off. Texas has a very shallow ground water table, so building a proper flame diverter would be a huge undertaking. They did the math and figured they could launch test articles without, possibly, This time it didn't pay off.

We went from plastic straws wrapped in paper to paper straws wrapped in plastic. It's called progress!

Lol

musk tend to ignore civil engineers and he get told again and again by them constantly.

and they were right. Of course this would happen. Doesn't take an engineer to realise that.

It was a success in that it lifted off and went through a flight sequence. It was a failure because the idiots blasted a huge crater out of hubris and lost the vehicle in its boost phase. As the NASA boys used to say, a successful failure. Just taking a couple months to build a proper dampening system would have likely allowed this launch to be a complete success from beginning to end instead of resulting in multiple engine failures and a self destruct.

@Dan P Oof, good call. wasn't really thinking there, saw Elon said 1-2 months and quickly thought of typical cure time for sidewalk. doesn't exactly apply, haha

@Dan P You're so sad... go home

If they had tested the booster at full throttle, it would've most likely led to the destruction of the entire stage 0 (Tower and Mount). This is because the booster itself would need to be filled up with more propellant than for a half thrust test, but this time it won't have a chance of escaping the debris. Overall it's better to just let it fly off if that's the case, instead of delaying the flight of an already outdated test article that was always planned to be destroyed anyways. The data gotten from this flight is more than enough for them to go through while they're upgrading the pad, plus now they have more accurate data and information of how much work needs to go into a flame diverter and deluge system for the launch mount.

Looks like the pad will only be needed for 5 or so launches. To do 50 launches the pad is going to look a lot different and cost way more and take years to make. I said yesterday that a water cooled steel plate is a good idea for a short term fix.

The starship cannot reach orbit by itself. It has no where near enough fuel, thrust to push that massive fully loaded rocket into orbit. After all why do you think no one else has been able to get a single stage rocket to orbit yet?? New technology will be necessary and that ain't coming for decades.

Yup, much longer than anyone is willing to admit.

yes.

You have to consider the end goal for Startship, Mars. Building a flame duct on Mars is extremely difficult. That is why they are trying to get away without one.

@@bjornflood6204 you can’t escape the laws of energy and gravity.

Wonder if they can angle out the rockets outwards only near the pad and then make it point straight down after they got like maybe 30m away from the pad. Thats how we do it when we use an oxyfuel cutter to gouge a new hole in the middle of a steel plate without fouling the cutter tip from the resulting backblast of molten metal