Spacex Starship IFT-2 launch today

[wraper]

Starship IFT-2 launch will happen today at ~ 7 a.m. CST / 8 a.m. EST (1300 UTC) (in less than 2 hours from posting this).

https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB

[Dan123456]

Are we taking bets on how long this one takes to explode? 

[wraper]

20 minutes

[Dan123456]

1 minute

Lol 

I’m hoping for detonation while still on the pad personally 

Edit: Awwwww Hopefully next time they blow the pad up along with the rocket 

[wraper]

1 minute

Lol 

I’m hoping for detonation while still on the pad personally 

Effing scammer channel impersonating Spacex got me when I searched for Spacex channel a bit before supposed launch, they put stream from the last launch and started their scam at the supposed liftoff.
EDIT: Apparently SpaceX streamed on Twitter only and crypto scammers made a good use of it.

[wraper]

Booster RUD but Starship is going
https://twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1dRKZEWQvrXxB

[wraper]

Well, at least it got into space.

[AlbertL]

Well, at least it got into space.

And, the launch pad survived!  I think.

[Psi]

One really important achievement for them was this full duration burn of every single booster engine. Every engine lit and not a single engine shut down.
Raptor engine reliability is critical and they seem to have made HUGE progress on that since the first launch.

Completing hot staging is also a great milestone.
Seems likely it may have damaged the top of the booster and caused the RUD, but still great progress getting separation.

The reason for the starship RUD right at the end of the burn isn't so clear, we will have to wait and see.

[rdl]

Amazingly successful test flight.
That Super Heavy Booster was beautiful with all those engines burning.
Thumbs up SpaceX.

[AVGresponding]

Next stop, the year 2022 and a colony on Mars!

[Psi]

Speculation is that the relight of the booster engines happened without stable acceleration to keep the fuel from floating/sloshing around in the tanks and many engines inhaled air and exploded. Resulting in an inability to continue the booster return and water landing mission, which triggered FTS.

[m98]

Next stop, the year 2022 and a colony on Mars!

Before that, we must stop in 2017 with the first crewed flight test of Boeing Starliner...

[wraper]

Next stop, the year 2022 and a colony on Mars!

Before that, we must stop in 2017 with the first crewed flight test of Boeing Starliner...

For 2x the money that SpaceX received for Crew Dragon.

[AndyBeez]

The launcher not only has to take on board enough fuel to insert the payload into low earth orbit but, the stages need enough fuel for the soft landing return. This makes for a 'dead fuel weight' overhead on the way up. Maybe the engineering horizon for this added mass is too far away at this scale?
A fully reusable launch system might be 'green', but cannot be sustainable when confidence of delivering an expensive payload /personnel into orbit is currently less than zero - despite all of the optomistic hollowing and whooping from the Muskovites every time the glue comes unstuck.
On a side note, I recently heard the Nasa versus SpaceX dynamic being described as, "it's rocket scientists versus space cowboys." Yee har...

[wraper]

On a side note, I recently heard the Nasa versus SpaceX dynamic being described as, "it's rocket scientists versus space cowboys." Yee har...

This year "space cowboys" put 4x more mass to the orbit (1000 tons) than the rest of the world combined. Also they are the only US launch provider that can currently deliver astronauts to ISS (for NASA you just mentioned).

[wraper]

Not to say since 2017 they had about 245 successful launches in a row which is absolutely unmatched reliability, F9 B5 (introduced in 2018) and Falcon Heavy had zero launch failures.

[Stray Electron]

Speculation is that the relight of the booster engines happened without stable acceleration to keep the fuel from floating/sloshing around in the tanks and many engines inhaled air and exploded. Resulting in an inability to continue the booster return and water landing mission, which triggered FTS.

     That shouldn't have been a problem.  Ullage engines have been used for MANY years to provide a slight amount of acceleration so that the fuel and oxidizer are pushed to the bottom of the tanks so that they will be properly picked up for engine re-ignitions.

[iMo]

Fantastic launch! All engines of the booster worked fine, the switching off sequence was impressive (look at the slowmo sequence)..
A significant achievement, imho.. 

[tom66]

Speculation is that the relight of the booster engines happened without stable acceleration to keep the fuel from floating/sloshing around in the tanks and many engines inhaled air and exploded. Resulting in an inability to continue the booster return and water landing mission, which triggered FTS.

I think this could be a factor.  If you look at the stream on Twitter, you can see that the engine 'diagram' shows many engines failing before the RUD.  Also, you can see debris coming off the top of the rocket. It's possible that a few engines failing next to each other damaged critical hydraulics or avionics and loss of control occurred leading to FTS.  Not sure if FTS is done by Range Officer or is fully automated on SpaceX rockets.

[DavidAlfa]

3...2...1.. Boom? Weird, didn't!
Damn, let's give it 10 seconds... still...
Wait separation, for sure will instantly blow apart... Nope!
However patience and perseverance always pays off, we all know Musk spends 50% of his time talking nosense in X, probably busy in some stupid woke thread so was unable to push the button earlier!
Damn it, almost forgot! *click*

[SiliconWizard]

On a side note, I recently heard the Nasa versus SpaceX dynamic being described as, "it's rocket scientists versus space cowboys." Yee har...

This year "space cowboys" put 4x more mass to the orbit (1000 tons) than the rest of the world combined. Also they are the only US launch provider that can currently deliver astronauts to ISS (for NASA you just mentioned).

Indeed.

[coppice]

Speculation is that the relight of the booster engines happened without stable acceleration to keep the fuel from floating/sloshing around in the tanks and many engines inhaled air and exploded. Resulting in an inability to continue the booster return and water landing mission, which triggered FTS.

     That shouldn't have been a problem.  Ullage engines have been used for MANY years to provide a slight amount of acceleration so that the fuel and oxidizer are pushed to the bottom of the tanks so that they will be properly picked up for engine re-ignitions.

The booster was twisting around at the time, which makes it pretty hard to get the fuel in the right part of the tanks. Most rockets which start twisting around quickly trigger their self destruct. This is not uncharted territory for Space X, though. This is an issue they also face with the Falcon, where they seem to have it sorted out very well. You might have expected them to have carried over what has proven reliable there, and nailed this on the first try.

[coppice]

Speculation is that the relight of the booster engines happened without stable acceleration to keep the fuel from floating/sloshing around in the tanks and many engines inhaled air and exploded. Resulting in an inability to continue the booster return and water landing mission, which triggered FTS.

I think this could be a factor.  If you look at the stream on Twitter, you can see that the engine 'diagram' shows many engines failing before the RUD.  Also, you can see debris coming off the top of the rocket. It's possible that a few engines failing next to each other damaged critical hydraulics or avionics and loss of control occurred leading to FTS.  Not sure if FTS is done by Range Officer or is fully automated on SpaceX rockets.

It seems more likely the engines didn't fail, but were starved of fuel. Once things get a little unstable tons of fuel hammering around in the tanks can soon break them up. You could see just before separation that they didn't just shut most of the 33 engines down in one go. They cut them in small groups, so the fuel flow didn't come to a shuddering halt, and act like a hammer to smash up the ship

[wraper]

Speculation is that the relight of the booster engines happened without stable acceleration to keep the fuel from floating/sloshing around in the tanks and many engines inhaled air and exploded. Resulting in an inability to continue the booster return and water landing mission, which triggered FTS.

     That shouldn't have been a problem.  Ullage engines have been used for MANY years to provide a slight amount of acceleration so that the fuel and oxidizer are pushed to the bottom of the tanks so that they will be properly picked up for engine re-ignitions.

The booster was twisting around at the time, which makes it pretty hard to get the fuel in the right part of the tanks. Most rockets which start twisting around quickly trigger their self destruct. This is not uncharted territory for Space X, though. This is an issue they also face with the Falcon, where they seem to have it sorted out very well. You might have expected them to have carried over what has proven reliable there, and nailed this on the first try.

It's very different from Falcon though. Different fuel, very different engines with different ignition mechanism, autogenous pressurization instead of helium, pretty much uncharted territory in every corner.