Context for the Starship explosion, if anyone wants it:
It’s not actually a failure. It would be better if it hadn’t exploded, of course, but most of us expected it to explode. Rocketry is just a controlled explosion.
@skrishna The damage to the launch complex is likely to be more significant than the ship failing, which could be entirely explained by the currently unreliable Raptor 2 batch (if it was one failing that took out the HPU and contributed to the spin).
Oh for a deluge system and flame trench.
Still, first heavy-lift, methane-powered rocket to reach obit (sorry).
@adamjcook@skrishna Well, it was made in the early days when Musk ruled the roost at Starbase, and he talked about it as if it was his decision. He did say it might prove to be a mistake.
Seems to fit with his philosophy of designing things out whenever possible unless there's evidence that it’s needed. I always thought that philosophy worked better for disposable prototype ships than permanent launch infrastructure.
@Mark_W_White@skrishna This organization is competent enough to build potentially viable full-flow staged-combustion-cycle rocket engines... but does not recognize the need for a flame trench?
It boggle the mind.
The FAA really dropped the ball on the environmental review of this site - and SpaceX should be punished for it and a new environmental review process should be launched, if possible.
Repairs at the pad site are going to be costly and time consuming. If SpaceX is at all cost-conscious, they gotta do something to protect the ground equipment (and by extension, the surrounding area). Trashing the pad every time you launch won’t scale.
@mjf_pro@adamjcook@skrishna 1. It wouldn’t have done any harm :) Coupled with a water deluge system and learning from everything that's been done elsewhere (e.g. Saturn V) then there must be a scalable solution.
Yeah, totally. I reckon it was short-sight dogmatism rather than cost-cutting. Think the cost of clear-up nearby is SpaceX responsibility under the FAA Environmental assessment?
@mjf_pro@Mark_W_White@skrishna There are existing engineering ethics considerations here, at minimum - something that is often violated in Musk's companies (Tesla, in particular).
And SpaceX staff owns that.
To your second point, I think that pretext that SpaceX was going to be an environmentally responsible neighbor to a sensitive habitat was abandoned long ago by the FAA.
There was a considerable brush fire (a year ago?) that burned away much of the area due to SpaceX's sloppy activities.
@adamjcook@mjf_pro@Mark_W_White break stuff, build fast or whatever his motto is, does not play well with environmental factors and I do hope there are consequences for that
Add comment