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Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
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Neutrion:

--- Quote from: coppercone2 on April 20, 2023, 09:43:47 pm ---and perhaps they should have added a voice over if there is clapping, like 'the traditional mission end clap has begun' because its just disturbing to see people clapping when their experiment just went up in smoke lol, wtf

I mean you can clap if a gymnast makes a mistake, but your not gonna clap if they impaled themselves on a pole vault or something. It seems like a explosion should exclude clapping unless its a bomb.  :-//

--- End quote ---
I also didn't get  why everyone is so happy. And also the commentators all smiling.
But maybe they are all spece-x emloyees in North-Korea mode now, and a camera with AI and face recognition is sending the scoring to the HR.  :)

And it was of course not an explosion, but a Special  Desintagration Operation.    :-DD

Is it true what David Hess wrote, that they are now suddenly abandoning completely the hydraulic steering and going for electronic? Its quiet a huge change.
coppice:

--- Quote from: Neutrion on April 21, 2023, 12:27:50 pm ---Is it true what David Hess wrote, that they are now suddenly abandoning completely the hydraulic steering and going for electronic? Its quiet a huge change.

--- End quote ---
This first launch was with a preliminary version of the ship. The others they have already assembled use electrically powered steering, and have numerous other substantial revisions. I think they learned a lot from building and ground testing this first one, so immediately they moved to building the second one they had already refined the design in numerous ways.
AndyBeez:
I wonder if the SpaceX R&D philosophy is derived from the continuous integration approach adopted in the software industry; that is, keep changing bits until they either stop failing or they start working? The aerospace industry uses a more tried and tested approach I know, but they have limited budgets. Our press was applauding the heavy launcher for its ability to place up to 100 people in space at the same time. No mention of the return. For continuous integration read, continuous disintegration.


--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 11:18:12 am ---Both NASA and the Russians had enormous problems trying to avoid their launch pads getting damaged in the early days. Several approaches to venting exhaust, and using huge sprays of water were tried before a few reliable solutions were settled on. SpaceX has upped the power, so they might be hitting limits in the proven approaches. This literally isn't rocket science, though. Its civil engineering with steel and concrete. A very well travelled road.

--- End quote ---
An issue for any rocket launch is the reflected shock wave. As the engine rumble travels outward, it reflects back off of the ground and the air. Think of striking the edge of a bucket of water. As the waves travel inwards, these amplify before 'bursting' at the centre. With the relatively slow progress of a heavy launch, a vehicle can receive a substantive shake from its own back wave. Maybe SpaceX can try launching from a mountain top to reduce air pressure, from a launch platform made of ice? Ice is sustainable, green and, as the ice melts, it damps the shockwave. They'll also need less coolants and be closer to space :-//

wraper:

--- Quote from: AndyBeez on April 21, 2023, 02:20:19 pm ---The aerospace industry uses a more tried and tested approach I know, but they have limited budgets. Our press was applauding the heavy launcher for its ability to place up to 100 people in space at the same time. No mention of the return. For continuous integration read, continuous disintegration.

--- End quote ---
If legacy US space industry had similar budget limits to SpaceX they'd never be able to pump out anything. Frankly it's stupid to make things multiple times more expensive and spend unreasonable amounts of time to make something that works on a first try. Not to say in the end it still fails like CST-100. And this stupid stagnant approach was why Challenger disaster happened. They knew about the issue for years, yet failed to iterate the design. It's more like PR issue to ensure that nothing explodes to keep politicians happy. However it results in a ton of money wasted and utterly disappointing lack of progress. What a joke that US had no means to launch astronauts from own soil for many years and relied on Russia instead.
You can say that SpaceX throws things at the wall and see what sticks, however Block 5 version of Falcon 9 (since 2018) seems to have the most reliable track record with about 170 launches and zero payload delivery failures, even though they reuse the boosters for more than 10 times. They iterated quite a bit to get to that and 5 year old F9 B5 barely resembles early Falcon 9 from 10 years ago.
asmi:

--- Quote from: coppice on April 21, 2023, 11:18:12 am ---Both NASA and the Russians had enormous problems trying to avoid their launch pads getting damaged in the early days. Several approaches to venting exhaust, and using huge sprays of water were tried before a few reliable solutions were settled on. SpaceX has upped the power, so they might be hitting limits in the proven approaches. This literally isn't rocket science, though. Its civil engineering with steel and concrete. A very well travelled road.

--- End quote ---
Yep, and it still not 100% solved. I heard that almost every Soyuz launch a few of fire trench tiles are lost and have to be replaced. This new rocket has like a double of thrust of Saturn-5, so some pad damage after first few launches is all but expected.
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