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Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE

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james_s:
Personally I find the cavalier approach kind of worrying. I have to follow all kinds of government regulations in order to fly ~1kg model airplanes and these guys are launching 5,000 ton rockets that have not been thoroughly tested. What happens if it malfunctions and flies toward a populated area? It has a destruct mechanism but that doesn't make the entire thing just disappear, and what if that fails?

tautech:

--- Quote from: bookaboo on April 24, 2023, 06:42:10 am ---I recommend Scott Manley's channel,  I  hadn't noticed the chunks of debris at clast off, didn't know the ground water is an issue if they wanted to a chamber.

https://youtu.be/w8q24QLXixo

--- End quote ---
Every construction project has issues but you just deal with them instead of doing shortcuts.  :horse:

Groundwater is NO excuse for not build the launch pad properly.....have they not heard of coffer dams and pumps ?  :-//

iMo:
While watching the launch you may see the immense shock waves spreading in the smoke/dust.. Those shock waves have to be diverted off the rocket body, indeed.
I do understand Elon's intention to mimic the future simplistic launchpads built on Moon/Mars, but his current rocket is not of the V2 size where Wernher could launch it off a citrus reamer sized diverter, imho :)

PS: here is the diverter soviets used to use in their attempt with N1 moon rockets (30 engines in the first stage) - interestingly it is not that big as I would expect (perhaps there were two in opposite sides of the launchpad). Doable to dig similar one out in the Boca Chica as well, imho..
https://www.popsci.com/this-rocket-failed-to-put-soviets-on-moon/


--- Quote from: tautech on April 24, 2023, 07:30:57 am ---Groundwater is NO excuse for not build the launch pad properly.....have they not heard of coffer dams and pumps ?  :-//

--- End quote ---

I would even let the diverters flooded with the water most of the time, and pump the water out before the actual launch (and store the water in a tank, it will be reused during the launch)..

PPS: nope, they had three diverters at each launchpad..
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/50-years-ago-soviet-s-moon-rocket-s-rollout-to-pad-affects-apollo-plans

Ed.Kloonk:

--- Quote from: tautech on April 24, 2023, 07:30:57 am ---
--- Quote from: bookaboo on April 24, 2023, 06:42:10 am ---I recommend Scott Manley's channel,  I  hadn't noticed the chunks of debris at clast off, didn't know the ground water is an issue if they wanted to a chamber.

https://youtu.be/w8q24QLXixo

--- End quote ---
Every construction project has issues but you just deal with them instead of doing shortcuts.  :horse:

Groundwater is NO excuse for not build the launch pad properly.....have they not heard of coffer dams and pumps ?  :-//

--- End quote ---

Comparisons have been made between how NASA did things and SpaceX does things.

I wonder if we can compare the build quality of a Tesla car since we have a common denominator.

asmi:

--- Quote from: Psi on April 22, 2023, 03:04:51 am ---NASA used to take risks and innovate rapidly, but being funded by taxes they quickly got burnt and learned that having things explode creates public outcry of wasted tax dollars.
So they slowed down innovation and spend 10x as much money slowly testing every part to the extremes so launches were likely to work first time and avoid public launch failures wherever possible. 

Which is pretty stupid, it uses more money and takes longer just to avoid the public *perception* of wasting money.
The current slow validate-everything NASA approach is only a valid approach if the first flight must be manned for some reason, and in todays world of computers, AI and automation, that is never the case.

--- End quote ---
Again, NASA is a political creature. It used to take risks when there was a political imperative to do so, and now it's primary function is to channel taxpayer's money into right districts, so it keeps low profile and tries not to upset the public too much.

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