SpaceX SN8 Starship DTS

[Charlie Foxtrot]

SpaceX's High-Altitude test of the Starship was... errr... mostly successful.

The first high altitude test of SpaceX's Super Heavy Lift 2nd stage, the Starship, went pretty well. Control of the assent, the 3 Raptor engines, inflight shutdowns, and transition to the belly-flop reentry posture went very well. Looks like the horizontally falling Starship was well controlled by the four articulating fins. Restart of the Raptors enabled the very high risk "kick-flip" maneuver to succeed.  And the vehicle hit the center of the touch down pad... just a little toooooo fast. 

Like all of the best Elon tests, this one ended in a huge fireball. 

I'm going to guess -- which absolutely ensures I'll be wrong -- SpaceX was right to worry about the fuel and oxidizer sloshing around after the "kick-flip" maneuver. To my highly untrained eye, it looks like at least one of the Raptors wasn't developing full thrust. 

I'll bet this test was 80-90% successful. Well done, SpaceX!

 

[justsomeguy!]

"Rapid unscheduled disassembly".

 

[SloopJonB]

They should have landed it on lower ground.

 

[slap]

Supposedly the pressure in the header tanks feeding the engines wasn't high enough during landing so the engines were starved.

SN9 is about ready to roll out for testing.

 

[silent bob]

 

[DRIFTW00D]

Buck Rogers would like the look,. Good stuff starts at 1:47:00. Fried Sand Crabs anyone?

 

[Charlie Foxtrot]

"Rapid unscheduled disassembly".

Aerospace speak....

Like the McDonnell Douglas Delta Clipper SSTO test: "It fell over and burned."  Nuh-uh, it blowed all the hell up.   

 

[ROADKILL666]

Oops

 

[SloopJonB]

My favourite is "Departed controlled flight and entered the ocean" for crashed in the ocean .

Second best is "Controlled flight into terrain" for flew into a mountain.

 

[Monkey]

My favourite is "Departed controlled flight and entered the ocean" for crashed in the ocean .

Second best is "Controlled flight into terrain" for flew into a mountain.

It’s fairly similar to how we haven’t had any fires at work in years. There’s been a few thermal events though. 

 

[Rain Man]

Rolls Royce cars don't break down, they "fail to proceed".

 

[Bump-n-Grind]

that'll buff right out

 

[hobot]

"the whole damn thing fell off!"

 

[ExOmo]

 

[See Level]

View attachment 4c0087ba-1a0f-4541-834a-6e4e1ac2e437.mp4

"Reusable"  :lol:

 

[Excession]

landing shot

 

[SloopJonB]

It’s fairly similar to how we haven’t had any fires at work in years. There’s been a few thermal events though. 

Uncontained thermal events to be precise.

 

[silent bob]

Altitude < Elevation

 

[Ed Lada]

Back in my rocket launching days, we had a few spectacular failures as well.  One kid built the Saturn 1B shown on the catalog cover.  When it launched only one of the 4 engines ignited on the 1st stage.  It took off very slowly just like the real one, unlike a normal launch when the damn things would fly off the launch pad very quicklyUnfortunately when it got to the end of the launch rail, it keeled over and crashed to the ground.  Then the explosive charge went off separating the 1st stage from the rest of the rocket and the parachute emerged.

Did anybody else mess around with these when you were young?   Some of the older kids in the neighborhood built a nice launch pad, and we had a countdown recording, and chase crews with binoculars and WW II surplus walkie talkies, on bicycles.  I knocked on more than one door asking if we could retrieve a rocket form somebody's back yard, or their garage roof...

We would spend hours browsing the Estes catalog, dreaming of our next purchase.