Actually incorrect. Early nasa had a very similar approach to rapid destructive iteration. Look at the early Apollo history. Many many many destructive test launches led to the wild success of the Saturn V. Google is your friend.
@@alexberry4758 Early NASA tests didn't have 60+ years of successful heavy vehicle and space flight launches behind them. Google is your friend too my man. ;)
@@rotorbob88 I didn’t realize that there was an equivalent to a solid stainless steel fully reusable upper and lower stage that spaceX has the ability to use as a reference point for their program.
"... First, they went to the moon, then they build a space station and all it did was go around the earth endlessly. Then, nothing"- Elon musks comment on NASA's history.
@@expozure360 I think the camera was permanently bolted to front fin. Any time you saw the camera moving relative to the body of the ship, the fin was turning.
4:50 "Issue with attitude control and general orientation." That's an understatement! I watch it live, and Starship was rotating for a while before re-entry, I got dizzy from the footage. It basically re-entered sideways.
Cold gas thrusters may have been clogged up with ice. That debris was done all white. It would explain the list of control. We will see if they will conclude if that was cause of the tumble
Look at T+0:45:00 to 0:47:00 -- It looks like the lack of attitude control resulted in her settling into a tail-first reentry making whatever happened to the heat-shield tiles at T+0:44:30ish pretty much a moot point. The bird wasn't configured to survive a reentry tail first.
Both, booster and ship seem to have failed on reentry attitude control. The booster at 6km height when it began to swing, the ship throughout orbit and reentry. Ship rotated all the way through orbit which was a strange sight to start with. Delivery vehicles do not spin ... Upon reentry, the ship had no controlled attack vector either. It seems that SpaceX's hypersonic fluid simulation capabilities are lacking. Hypersonic fluid dynamics is considered hard although there are solvers like Star-CCM+ which may be suitable or not. Nevertheless, given their Falcon9 expertise, they should be able to solve this.
@@falklumo Totally agree, i just argued with someone who (oddly) claimed it wasn't actually spinning on re-entry, lol. I was hoping the spin was some sort of test, but starting re-entry still spinning told me that it most certainly wasn't. Awesome to see the plasma forming though, still a great day with great progress!
@triage2962 I know, I was just being overly optimistic at the time, lol. Still though, they were displaying telemetry data for alot longer than I thought they would be getting it, based on its screwed up re-entry. VERY curious to know what it looked like on impact, 316 SSTL can take a real beating, the chunks mighta been prerry big still, lol
The claimed tests were a door opening, which we never saw fully opened, the propellent transfer was claimed to happen but the uncontrolled rolling makes it highly unlikely this actually completed, and then the engine restart was outright skipped. Hadly a compelling set of 'tests'. This rocket itself failed on the Booster during atmospheric entry when it lost control and looks to have induced an ossilation which prevented engine restart, and the upper stage failed on engine shutdown when an uncontroled leak occoured which doomed the vehicle.
Its insane to me that all of these tests are unilateral failures, and Elon/Spacex receives so much undeserved praise for them. To be generous there may be some silver linings but I think they're all easily negated by other dumb shit that SpaceX does. Buts nice to see in a sea of comments glazing Elon, someone's able to precisely dismantle the test and isn't afraid to criticize it. Do you have any space channel or source recommendations that cover this? I keep looking but its hard to find, the closest is Scott Manley but it feels like he caved to the mob and is only able to point out things in a roundabout way. Theres CSS but hes more of a space channel by proxy from his coverage of Musks' antics
@04:34 This is ice, not tiles. Tiles generally fall off on the way up at from launch up through max-Q, where ass ice falls off in space as metallurgy contracts and expands with fuel transfers and burns. source: pilot and engineer.
The ship seemed to want to stay rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise from what I would have expected. I would have loved to see the camera on the other side of the ship to see if both those control surfaces were working. If not, problem identified. If so, It might be as simple as a programming error or something very hard to pin down.
Didn’t see the spacecraft slow very mush as it hit the atmosphere. Stayed over Mach 6 or 7. Mach 7 to landing like a plane at 225 knots will always be one of the most impressive flight capabilities in history. Maybe it wasn't cost effective and human error destroyed safety twice out of hundreds of flights, but the technical achievement of the Space Shuttle flying from space to a runway will always be a high bar for future space vehicles….
You're really new to rocket development aren't you?? This rocket just made major progress from ITF-2 to ITF-3. It's about progress not perfection. And Mars is not the focus now. The Moon. And even before the moon are a host of other goals that will build to going to the moon!!
So strap yourself in bye all means i will not hold it against you if you take my seat i will get another ticket to ride the mars express when you have conquered your fears of getting all the way to the moon however tell Elon to get a shifty on for he as only got a 5 year window before we are rudely impacted by his next terrestrial mining project@@michaeldeierhoi4096
It's a shame they couldn't get the reentry on the first attempt. NASA did with its the first flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1981 (with two Astronauts on board.) And even the Russians did it with the unmanned flight of their Space Shuttle Buran in 1988, although it never flew to Space again. SpaceX will never get another chance at this one, they failed where NASA and even the Russians had succeeded.
What are you smoking? Both of those agencies also has over a decade of working on a design and making a functional rocket. Did they show all the tests they did? Nope. You live in a world that allows you to see live all the tearing being done. Just love how critical people are of anything not a perfect success. This project is only 5-6 years old. Get over the it should be complete by now.
No. That's false. There was much testing of the glide capabilities of the shuttle. Secondly, I don't think you want to use the shuttle as a yardstick for success. Yes, they were able to accomplish some things, but the ratio of costs and the loss of six humans, the entire program was arguably a very expensive failure that should never have been. Beyond your I'll-informed statement, Elon does not need SpaceX, but NASA sure needs SpaceX. The United States very much needs SpaceX. Right now, there's no one in the world even close to their cadence and success.
@@JeremyDN Sorry, but both NASA and the Soviets completed their first reentries of their large reusable space vehicles where SpaceX has failed on their first attempt. Perhaps they weren't trying very hard, or perhaps there is something about the Starship design that is problematic and unfortunate. SpaceX must still prove that they can do this - reentry isn't optional for Starship. Either they figure out how to do this or they will have to scrap the entire program.
@@stratolestele7611 As it stands right now, Starship is certainly less SUCCESSFUL than the US Space Shuttle Program. It hasn't even done anything useful in Space. I think even the Pez Door Test failed on this flight. Starship certainly has potential, but only if they can get to the point where they can complete entire missions and start reusing these vehicles. You can't have it both ways for ever .. eventually you need to start having completely successful missions. In that respect Starship is really floundering in its development. NASA is probably going to sh*t-can Artemis III because SpaceX isn't anywhere close to being ready. And today's (yet another) partial success isn't changing that. It's two steps forward .. only to discover that your destination was two steps farther away than you originally thought. Progressing yes .. but at the same time still a long way to go.
@@ericmatthews8497 Again, you are trying to compare rapid prototyping against traditional programs. It isn’t the same at all. NASA spent over 10 years and 10 billion to develop the shuttle. SpaceX is at around 6 years and maybe 2-3 billion so far. Still amazes me how quick people jump down their throat thinking this is the final prototype. They hit most of their goals. Onto the next. Exactly how rapid prototyping works. Maybe stop crying so hard thinking you know more than these engineers.
Gave me chills seeing the plasma grow and wrap around the ship. I don't think anyone has ever been able to watch that live due to the blackout period. I bet the 4th launch is going to check the splash down box.
@angryhairpeice Nope, but give them a few more launches to work out the bugs, and payloads will start going up. What was seen today was an amazing accomplishment.
I don't think I've ever seen the reentry of a spaceship LIVE before. It's only possible through satellite relays since terrestrial antennas lose signal due to the plasma.
I watched the video feed of this launch and the whole mystery of what happened to Starship was up where with where's Princess Kate. No one seemed to know. Both missing in action
@@hawkdsl How did it fail,when they achieved far more than they expected to do,it was only in the last bit that there was trouble,every thing else went very well.
@@terryharris1291What color is your Kool-Aid? It failed every test item for this flight! That's OK though, it's a prototype. It needed to fail so they can fix those problems. The boost back failed, it failed to light the engines for soft landing. It failed to open the doors. We don't know if fuel transfer worked yet. It failed to renter. It did fly though!
As enthusiastic as SpaceX and its fans are about this flight I expect that NASA was less so. The failures that we saw broadcast were more fundamental than "iterative."
It’s way too early to tell, before the data is analysed. It’s worrying that the booster engines appear to have failed to relight, but that could be due to other factors. Including a control issue that sent the booster outside the acceptable envelope, triggering an abort. It took quite a while before SpaceX managed to land its Falcon 9 rockets, and every time people (including nasa) had more doubts about the whole thing. Now it’s routine.
@@Miata822 It's about progress not perfection. Regardless of any GAO report. NASA understands this. Progress is slowest in the phases of testing and yet Space X made a big step forward with improvements from the last flight to this one.
*Edit: it's amazing how many will come out of the woodwork to bash "fans" and "Musk rats". Obviously this is going to cost loads, but it's the notion of it all being wasted money that gets me. This was a fantastically useful test, but it doesn't matter because of who owns the company. A guy starts tweeting the "wrong" opinions and suddenly the darling of the green movement is hated. Stay salty my friends.
Not fast enough. SpaceX has deadlines to fullfil. With this failure Artemis will most likely be pushed till mid 2030's if it isn't cancelled by the government
@@AP-qs2zf AND the problem issues left are getting more “interesting and complex” to deal with as they are firmly rooted in “initial design decisions” that require more than bandaids to “Bondo” over. This continues to be “entertaining” and follows a “predictable Musk methodology progression”!! I wonder what happens when a significantly major rethinking of the tile system has to be instigated ¿
@@AP-qs2zf Artemis 3 will probably happen with NASA's second choice provider Blue Origin, years later than planned but still ahead of SpaceX. Once SpaceX was taken by the "that'd be cool!" approach to engineering, its success prospects diminished a lot.
Not..’a massive success’..but undeniably ‘progress.’ These are test flights. You hope for complete success..but it’s typically it’s a step by step by step process. Hoping next one shows further progress.
That launch was amazing, the booster and vehicle performed well, reaching space and accelerating to near orbital speeds. I'll be happy to read more about the booster crash at high speed, and the vehicle's disintegration during reentry.
Considering the 1st launch had so many engine failures, the fact the engines worked so well on only the 3rd flight is a real testament to all concerned 😎👍
The "tiles" coming off were no tiles. The majority of them appeared at ~114km altitude where there is still little air drag but temperature starts to raise. At ~100km (Karman line) where air drag is more noticeable, no more "tiles' were to be seen. From this I conclude ice crust, maybe one per frozen-over tile indeed.
Nah.. once they got deeper into Mach 25 air stream the light tiles stopped floating away .. they were ripped off and shot in the other direction away from this camera.
At 110km there's a fair bit of molecular O2 and it doesn't take much when you're reentering at 4-5 miles per SECOND. You're over here commenting as if the thermosphere doesn't exist.
@@asdfjoe123 You ignore the Kármán criterion: at higher than 100km and even at orbital speed, atmospheric lift becomes increasingly negligible. If the tiles withstand the weather at 0m, then they also withstand orbital speed at 114km. At 114km, there only is 1/5 the drag force of at 100km.
it was also venting LO2 or LCH4 for quite some time which has a tendency to form ice crust that breaks off and floats around - see current SpaceX launches for reference.
Today was a great flight. Next up get the vehicle under control through entry interface and diagnose what kept b10 from sticking the soft splashdown. The pace really needs to ramp up, but for the most part a great test.
I know they attempted it but do we actually know if it was successful? On the NSF feed they mentioned it was fast. Im not saying it wasn't successful but im really interested to see if it moved all or even the majority of the fuel. Or if they encountered an issue that stopped things early. I know SpaceX announced the fuel transfer test was completed but they didn't mention if it was actually successful on the live stream.
1000kg extra fuel in the main tanks over the header tanks probably didn't help re-entry controllability. That would be sloshing around, and would be weight further back. There is a reason the header tanks are where they are.
@@agsystems8220 They never fired the engines up and the re-entry was not controlled but they did ty to control it with the flaps but with no effect at that altitude.
If early Falcon is anything to go by, it won't be long now until even Starship is perfectly flawless during each and every subsequent flight. As today proved, rapid iteration works best.
No it dose not prove this in the slightest, the time and cost of Starship development already has been enormous and the total cost and total duration are not at all clear. Simply making SMALL incremental improvements is no guarantee that a destination will be reached even if time and money were infinite.
@@kennethferland5579 Oh shut up and go away with your defeatist attitude. It's people like you who've kept us from going back to space for all these decades.
@@kennethferland5579 They went from blowing up the launch pad to a 200 ton orbital class rocket in 3 launches. Those are not "SMALL" incremental improvements. Those are HUGE leaps each launch.
I am happy with it, it doesn't need to have reuse functionality in order to be ready for the Artemis mission, just reach orbit and it proved it could do that. Next thing it needs is a refueling demonstration
They actually did an initial refueling demonstration on this flight while Starship was in orbit. (Without a counterpart of course) They spun the Starship in a specific way to see if it would push the fuel around the way they anticipated.
@@hawkdsl How so? HLS would never have to re-enter earth's atmosphere and landing on the moon is easy af relative to earth and Starship has already(barely) proved out it's flip maneuver
@@BarrGCHow so? Are you kidding? How long do you think it'll be before the first test flight (and landing) to the moon is going to be now? It's been 5 years already from hopper to the latest failed flight..they are not even close to an HLS yet.
Congratulations to SpaceX 150-200 TONS TO ORBIT is already a profitable scenario even fully expendable. Also my guess is that they will soon succeed in Booster reuse given their experience with F9 first stage landings.
Makes you wonder whether or not SpaceX actually has a Plan B in their pockets to use Starship as a fully expendable rocket. A lot less complexity, no need for a heat shield, a lot more mass to orbit and all that.
My family used to work with NASA to coat the quick disconnects for the cryogenic fuel for the moon flights and other components. Now, we are helping build this bad boy. Crazy how things progress.
I think you might want to start paying attention. 80% of the payload weight put in space last year was put by SpaceX. They developed the first really practical reusable space launcher which is enabled Elon Musk to build starlink, developed a reusable space capsule for human transport, reusable engines, And that's just getting started. Starship will literally change humanity by making it as cheap to put payload in orbit is flying it around the world in a 747. Now, is that not good enough for you??
I wonder how many of the issues the ships experienced were deliberately induced. I mean, they were going to destroy both ships anyway, so why not push them to breaking point and see how they handle it? When they do finally decide to land them, they can just concentrate on that.
They keep talking about this shows the ability to launch "giant payloads" into space but none of these test flights had even dummy payloads. For the second one they said it was fully tanked up to simulate as if it had a payload but then blamed the excessive fuel load for the explosion. I’m willing to give a pass on the failed booster landing since that’s just a cost reduction - logistics thing but the failed “pez door” closure, skipped re-light of SS motors, loss of control, tiles falling off, and failed re-entry seems like a lot of missed milestones. They got at least three flights using this incremental approach to show true orbit capability and successful re-entry. Forget about the re-fueling and moon orbit missions being on schedule to meet the NASA requirements.
Eliminating or segregating H2O & CO2 ices in the main LOX tank seems to me essential to maximize reliability in both booster and ship. Otherwise valves can jam (open or closed), filters can clog, engines can fail.
What are you talking about? It was a success! It cleared the pad. Elmo says that's enough to count as success. I rather doubt any astronauts scheduled to fly on that thing would agree, however.
Door didn't close ( being stuck half open : you can see the exterior light ) and SS not in "line" with atmospheric flow on re entry, so it melted and become destroyed because of the incorrect orientation of the belly, it re entered with not covered by thermic tiles half body exposed to heat.
Could have been the fuel acting like a pendulum on the booster once the top started swaying and the grid fins stalled when they went past a useful range of motion so they lost effectiveness.
It looked like the booster was low enough on LOX that it might not have been able to get enough of it pumped to the engines to relight all of them. Lots of sloshing and bouncing before that.
As long as they got enough data about the door, the door failing to open may have been better than it working because now they have something to improve.
Either it was a control issue with the avionics, or the fuel is still sloshing around. you can see it rocking side to side as it fell like a leaf in the direction of the plasma. not to mention all the tiles coming off.
@@triage2962 That initial "leakage" was used to provide ullage direction and/or pressure differential for the propellant transfer. Then the excess propellant mass was supposed to be dumped. After all that, the tumble was never cancelled, probably due to inadequate propellant vapor pressure. Perhaps a valve stuck open.
@@imconsequetau5275 We dont know but i think the Starship has no truster for flight control expect the main truster so after it startet rotating there was nothing they could do.
@@triage2962 Starship presently relies on the propellant vapor [pressure] in the main tanks to make orientation thrust. If the vapor pressure is released due to leaks, there is no thrust. If the liquid is all gone, there is no way to re-create pressure from slow boiling (from sunlight). Actually, the thruster efficiency also depends on vapor temperature, which is increased by operating the six Raptor engines.
