Author Topic: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE  (Read 8972 times)

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Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #50 on: April 21, 2023, 04:12:48 pm »
The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground.

What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4.

Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM).

The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs.
So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht?
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #51 on: April 21, 2023, 05:02:41 pm »
The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground.

What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4.

Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM).

The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs.
So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht?

I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare.
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Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #52 on: April 21, 2023, 05:19:03 pm »
The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground.

What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4.

Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM).

The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs.
So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht?

I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare.
I'm not implying SpaceX is perfect, but after a few nasty incidents as they tested and refined Falcon 9, they've had more than 150 launches in a row without a major incident, and will put 80% of all payload into orbit this year. What makes you think the new ship will be any different? They do everything in the public gaze, with various YouTubers documenting every success and mishap. The reason the old NASA looked a lot better is it was working in the cold war, and revealing much less. To kids like me in the west Russia's efforts appeared cleaner, but that's only because we were even less aware of how many touch and go incidents the Russians had. At least we got to see the terror on various astronauts faces as they waited hours for lift off after it was stalled numerous times for incidents during countdown. A LOT of US rockets blew up in the late 50s and early 60s, and they'd only just started to settle down when the first men were sent up.
 
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Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #53 on: April 21, 2023, 05:32:24 pm »
The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground.

What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4.

Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM).

The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs.
So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht?

I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare.
I'm not implying SpaceX is perfect, but after a few nasty incidents as they tested and refined Falcon 9, they've had more than 150 launches in a row without a major incident, and will put 80% of all payload into orbit this year. What makes you think the new ship will be any different? They do everything in the public gaze, with various YouTubers documenting every success and mishap. The reason the old NASA looked a lot better is it was working in the cold war, and revealing much less. To kids like me in the west Russia's efforts appeared cleaner, but that's only because we were even less aware of how many touch and go incidents the Russians had. At least we got to see the terror on various astronauts faces as they waited hours for lift off after it was stalled numerous times for incidents during countdown. A LOT of US rockets blew up in the late 50s and early 60s, and they'd only just started to settle down when the first men were sent up.

Yes, lots of U.S. rockets blew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. Not all of these were NASA projects (they were military projects to develop ICBMs to carry nukes). The reason Saturn/Apollo was so successful was the project management/quality assurance/testing processes that NASA instituted starting with the manned programs. I think SpaceX uses a looser process, which results in more test failures. Sure, they get there in the end, but the development process seems more chaotic and out of control.

The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see.
"That's not even wrong" -- Wolfgang Pauli
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #54 on: April 21, 2023, 05:43:25 pm »
The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see.
In the 60s NASA was only as open as it was pushed to be (i.e. not very open except for actual launches, which didn't occur deep in deserted areas, like Kazakhstan, so they were hard to hide), and things seemed to go quite well. Now its almost as open as SpaceX and its performance looks quite poor. Coincidence? I doubt it. Look under the surface of most development work and it looks pretty messy.
 

Online themadhippy

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #55 on: April 21, 2023, 05:48:34 pm »
wonder how many of the early nasa explosions was down to there head honchos previous job were making things go bang was the final goal
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #56 on: April 21, 2023, 06:01:41 pm »
The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see.
In the 60s NASA was only as open as it was pushed to be (i.e. not very open except for actual launches, which didn't occur deep in deserted areas, like Kazakhstan, so they were hard to hide), and things seemed to go quite well. Now its almost as open as SpaceX and its performance looks quite poor. Coincidence? I doubt it. Look under the surface of most development work and it looks pretty messy.

Please explain what you mean by your assertion that NASA was only as open as they had to be in the 1960s. I've extensively studied the history of the space program in the 1960s, including reviewing primary sources, and I don't see any trend to secrecy at all. Yes, the military had their own parallel space programs (such as the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the various spy satellite programs), but these weren't connected with NASA, except in very peripheral ways. NASA published almost everything relating to their programs and it was available in book form from the very beginning (I've got copies of a lot of it).

As to messy, yes, some of it may have seemed messy, and that's understandable because a lot of what they were doing had never been done before. As an example, I suggest people read a series of memos written by Howard "Bill" Tindall known as Tindallgrams -- they give a good flavor for the types of internal discussions that took place at NASA in the 1960s.

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-Tindallgrams.html
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Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #57 on: April 21, 2023, 06:40:09 pm »
The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see.
In the 60s NASA was only as open as it was pushed to be (i.e. not very open except for actual launches, which didn't occur deep in deserted areas, like Kazakhstan, so they were hard to hide), and things seemed to go quite well. Now its almost as open as SpaceX and its performance looks quite poor. Coincidence? I doubt it. Look under the surface of most development work and it looks pretty messy.

Please explain what you mean by your assertion that NASA was only as open as they had to be in the 1960s. I've extensively studied the history of the space program in the 1960s, including reviewing primary sources, and I don't see any trend to secrecy at all. Yes, the military had their own parallel space programs (such as the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the various spy satellite programs), but these weren't connected with NASA, except in very peripheral ways. NASA published almost everything relating to their programs and it was available in book form from the very beginning (I've got copies of a lot of it).

As to messy, yes, some of it may have seemed messy, and that's understandable because a lot of what they were doing had never been done before. As an example, I suggest people read a series of memos written by Howard "Bill" Tindall known as Tindallgrams -- they give a good flavor for the types of internal discussions that took place at NASA in the 1960s.

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-Tindallgrams.html
Take an example. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, and pilot David Scott nearly died on Gemini 8, when things got out of hand in a docking manoeuvre with an Agena craft, and had to return immediately to Earth. In 1966 you wouldn't have been aware that anything serious had taken place. I was one of those watching the news about anything to do with space travel at that time.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #58 on: April 21, 2023, 07:40:49 pm »
The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see.
In the 60s NASA was only as open as it was pushed to be (i.e. not very open except for actual launches, which didn't occur deep in deserted areas, like Kazakhstan, so they were hard to hide), and things seemed to go quite well. Now its almost as open as SpaceX and its performance looks quite poor. Coincidence? I doubt it. Look under the surface of most development work and it looks pretty messy.

Please explain what you mean by your assertion that NASA was only as open as they had to be in the 1960s. I've extensively studied the history of the space program in the 1960s, including reviewing primary sources, and I don't see any trend to secrecy at all. Yes, the military had their own parallel space programs (such as the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the various spy satellite programs), but these weren't connected with NASA, except in very peripheral ways. NASA published almost everything relating to their programs and it was available in book form from the very beginning (I've got copies of a lot of it).

As to messy, yes, some of it may have seemed messy, and that's understandable because a lot of what they were doing had never been done before. As an example, I suggest people read a series of memos written by Howard "Bill" Tindall known as Tindallgrams -- they give a good flavor for the types of internal discussions that took place at NASA in the 1960s.

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-Tindallgrams.html
Take an example. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, and pilot David Scott nearly died on Gemini 8, when things got out of hand in a docking manoeuvre with an Agena craft, and had to return immediately to Earth. In 1966 you wouldn't have been aware that anything serious had taken place. I was one of those watching the news about anything to do with space travel at that time.


I've watched the news coverage of all NASA flights starting with Gemini III in 1965 and I distinctly remember the coverage of Gemini VIII and the stuck thruster issue. It received prominent coverage on the US TV networks.

What the news shows is up to them, not NASA. If the news didn't show the docking and the stuck thruster problem, that's not NASA's fault.

NASA themselves published a documentary on the flight of Gemini VIII in 1966 and they certainly didn't hide anything. In fact, this video is on YouTube and you can see for yourself:

"That's not even wrong" -- Wolfgang Pauli
 
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Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #59 on: April 21, 2023, 09:53:16 pm »
Take an example. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, and pilot David Scott nearly died on Gemini 8, when things got out of hand in a docking manoeuvre with an Agena craft, and had to return immediately to Earth. In 1966 you wouldn't have been aware that anything serious had taken place. I was one of those watching the news about anything to do with space travel at that time.

I've watched the news coverage of all NASA flights starting with Gemini III in 1965 and I distinctly remember the coverage of Gemini VIII and the stuck thruster issue. It received prominent coverage on the US TV networks.

What the news shows is up to them, not NASA. If the news didn't show the docking and the stuck thruster problem, that's not NASA's fault.

NASA themselves published a documentary on the flight of Gemini VIII in 1966 and they certainly didn't hide anything. In fact, this video is on YouTube and you can see for yourself:


Yep, just as I said. That's the story we got, saying nothing the Russian couldn't figure out for themselves. It describes a modest problem, handled smoothly. No big deal, and protection against a recurrence was added afterwards. Only much later did we find out that the astronauts came within seconds of blacking out in a ship spinning out of control, which would certainly have killed them.
 

Offline Sal Ammoniac

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #60 on: April 21, 2023, 10:16:34 pm »
Take an example. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, and pilot David Scott nearly died on Gemini 8, when things got out of hand in a docking manoeuvre with an Agena craft, and had to return immediately to Earth. In 1966 you wouldn't have been aware that anything serious had taken place. I was one of those watching the news about anything to do with space travel at that time.

I've watched the news coverage of all NASA flights starting with Gemini III in 1965 and I distinctly remember the coverage of Gemini VIII and the stuck thruster issue. It received prominent coverage on the US TV networks.

What the news shows is up to them, not NASA. If the news didn't show the docking and the stuck thruster problem, that's not NASA's fault.

NASA themselves published a documentary on the flight of Gemini VIII in 1966 and they certainly didn't hide anything. In fact, this video is on YouTube and you can see for yourself:


Yep, just as I said. That's the story we got, saying nothing the Russian couldn't figure out for themselves. It describes a modest problem, handled smoothly. No big deal, and protection against a recurrence was added afterwards. Only much later did we find out that the astronauts came within seconds of blacking out in a ship spinning out of control, which would certainly have killed them.


What do you consider "much later"? NASA did publish the transcripts of the debriefing of Armstrong and Scott at the time, so perhaps the seriousness of the issue wasn't communicated in mass media, but it certainly wasn't kept secret either.
"That's not even wrong" -- Wolfgang Pauli
 

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #61 on: April 21, 2023, 11:02:57 pm »
Ground zero damage:

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #62 on: April 22, 2023, 12:21:25 am »
It effing flew away the concrete.
 

Online Psi

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #63 on: April 22, 2023, 03:04:51 am »
The first fully assembled Saturn V launched successfully. However, you are ignoring a rather long series of precursors which blew up trying to learn enough to bring that about. You are also ignoring Apollo 1, a subset of the full Saturn V, which incinerated its three occupants before even leaving the ground.

What precursors? NASA boldly took an all-up approach to testing the Saturn V. The S-1C and S-II stages had never flown before the flight of Apollo 4.

Apollo 1 used the Saturn 1B, which apart from using the S-IVB as its second stage, was not a subset of the Saturn V, and the fire was entirely due to faults in the command module and had nothing to do with the Saturn booster. In fact, the Saturn that would have flown Apollo 1 was used successfully to launch Apollo 5 (the first in-space test of the LM).

The Saturn series had a perfect record of reaching orbit. Note that I'm only talking about Saturn here, not the Atlas, the Titan, or any of the other launch vehicles used by NASA for various programs.
So, if you define things narrowly enough, you can spin the line that things went really well. Whoda thoguht?

I'm not implying the Saturn/Apollo program was perfect, just that it had vastly more successes than failures. The Saturn boosters had a nearly perfect record. The Apollo spacecraft, with the exception of the issues that caused the Apollo 1 fire and the Apollo 13 abort, also had an excellent track record. In seven attempts to land on the moon, six were successful. Kennedy's goal was achieved with six months to spare.
I'm not implying SpaceX is perfect, but after a few nasty incidents as they tested and refined Falcon 9, they've had more than 150 launches in a row without a major incident, and will put 80% of all payload into orbit this year. What makes you think the new ship will be any different? They do everything in the public gaze, with various YouTubers documenting every success and mishap. The reason the old NASA looked a lot better is it was working in the cold war, and revealing much less. To kids like me in the west Russia's efforts appeared cleaner, but that's only because we were even less aware of how many touch and go incidents the Russians had. At least we got to see the terror on various astronauts faces as they waited hours for lift off after it was stalled numerous times for incidents during countdown. A LOT of US rockets blew up in the late 50s and early 60s, and they'd only just started to settle down when the first men were sent up.

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.
« Last Edit: April 22, 2023, 03:11:47 am by Psi »
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Offline bookaboo

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #64 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
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #65 on: April 24, 2023, 06:56:36 am »
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?
 

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #66 on: April 24, 2023, 07:30:57 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
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 ?  :-//
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Offline iMo

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #67 on: April 24, 2023, 08:07:45 am »
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/

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

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
« Last Edit: April 24, 2023, 09:20:32 am by iMo »
Readers discretion is advised..
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #68 on: April 24, 2023, 09:21:15 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
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 ?  :-//

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.
iratus parum formica
 

Offline asmi

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #69 on: April 25, 2023, 07:37:12 pm »
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.
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.

Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #70 on: April 25, 2023, 07:46:40 pm »
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
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 ?  :-//
Have they never heard of the Netherlands? Its nature is right there in the name.
 

Offline jmelson

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #71 on: April 26, 2023, 01:19:18 am »

Yes, lots of U.S. rockets blew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. Not all of these were NASA projects (they were military projects to develop ICBMs to carry nukes). The reason Saturn/Apollo was so successful was the project management/quality assurance/testing processes that NASA instituted starting with the manned programs. I think SpaceX uses a looser process, which results in more test failures. Sure, they get there in the end, but the development process seems more chaotic and out of control.
I worked as a work-study at NASA Wallops Island in 1972 in the 2-way radio and CCTV section.  They had a "blooper reel" of video of stuff blowing up that just went On and ON!  There were also war stories.  One I remember was they launched a rocket and then zoomed the camera in on some object left on the pad.  Somebody who knew the rocket yelled "That's the steering drive" as the rocket started to sway and then zoomed and looped all over the island.  Some brave soul got up on the otpcal tracker and tried to guide the radars on the rocket visually so the command destruct antennas had a chance to point at it.  It was just looping all over so fast that the antennas couldn't slew that fast.  Finally, tne thing plunged into a sand dune and exploded.

Another story was a rocket that was supposed to arc over into an orbital path, but the timer that was to start the course change failed, and it just kept going up and up.  Nobody knew exactly where it was going to come down.  Due to Coriolus effects, they were pretty sure it would end up somewhere in the Atlantic, but not sure how far off the coast.  They had to sit there with the radar until well after midnight before they could be sure it would be safe.

So, LOTS of stuff went boom back then.

Then, there were range safety oopses.  Due to ocean swells, it was possble for small fishing boats to be missed when they swept the area.  Some guys were out there in a 16 foot boat and had a Nike first stage drop out of the sky at a couple thousand miles per hour a few hundred feet from their boat.  I think they were tossed dozens of feet in the air.
Jon
 
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Offline coppercone2

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #72 on: April 26, 2023, 03:10:55 am »
The Russians had a policy of only publicizing successful missions. Who knows how many failed and were swept under the rug? NASA (and SpaceX) do things completely out in the open, so the failures are there for all to see.
In the 60s NASA was only as open as it was pushed to be (i.e. not very open except for actual launches, which didn't occur deep in deserted areas, like Kazakhstan, so they were hard to hide), and things seemed to go quite well. Now its almost as open as SpaceX and its performance looks quite poor. Coincidence? I doubt it. Look under the surface of most development work and it looks pretty messy.

Please explain what you mean by your assertion that NASA was only as open as they had to be in the 1960s. I've extensively studied the history of the space program in the 1960s, including reviewing primary sources, and I don't see any trend to secrecy at all. Yes, the military had their own parallel space programs (such as the Air Force's Manned Orbiting Laboratory and the various spy satellite programs), but these weren't connected with NASA, except in very peripheral ways. NASA published almost everything relating to their programs and it was available in book form from the very beginning (I've got copies of a lot of it).

As to messy, yes, some of it may have seemed messy, and that's understandable because a lot of what they were doing had never been done before. As an example, I suggest people read a series of memos written by Howard "Bill" Tindall known as Tindallgrams -- they give a good flavor for the types of internal discussions that took place at NASA in the 1960s.

https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-Tindallgrams.html
Take an example. Everyone knows Neil Armstrong, and pilot David Scott nearly died on Gemini 8, when things got out of hand in a docking manoeuvre with an Agena craft, and had to return immediately to Earth. In 1966 you wouldn't have been aware that anything serious had taken place. I was one of those watching the news about anything to do with space travel at that time.


I've watched the news coverage of all NASA flights starting with Gemini III in 1965 and I distinctly remember the coverage of Gemini VIII and the stuck thruster issue. It received prominent coverage on the US TV networks.

What the news shows is up to them, not NASA. If the news didn't show the docking and the stuck thruster problem, that's not NASA's fault.

NASA themselves published a documentary on the flight of Gemini VIII in 1966 and they certainly didn't hide anything. In fact, this video is on YouTube and you can see for yourself:



I appreciate this, its really easy to run into NASA related 'disinformation' related to NASA/MIC/GOVERNMENT collusion/conspiracy that are used to credit some whacky theories and discredit the organization. Alot of people won't bother to check what NASA actually said. People seem to imply that US and the USSR space programs behaved similarly, but it seems to be far from the truth.

I think publishing the video only 1 year after the event, with the limitations of technology (difficulty in editing, distributing, etc film) means that it was incredibly diligent about being transparent. These are the same people that sent the golden record out after all. They seemed hopeful. If NASA was as paranoid as some conspiracists/propagandaists claim, the golden record would never ever be produced, its practically a blue print on the earth.
« Last Edit: April 26, 2023, 03:14:56 am by coppercone2 »
 

Offline coppice

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #73 on: April 26, 2023, 03:44:04 am »

Yes, lots of U.S. rockets blew up in the 1950s and early 1960s. Not all of these were NASA projects (they were military projects to develop ICBMs to carry nukes). The reason Saturn/Apollo was so successful was the project management/quality assurance/testing processes that NASA instituted starting with the manned programs. I think SpaceX uses a looser process, which results in more test failures. Sure, they get there in the end, but the development process seems more chaotic and out of control.
I worked as a work-study at NASA Wallops Island in 1972 in the 2-way radio and CCTV section.  They had a "blooper reel" of video of stuff blowing up that just went On and ON!  There were also war stories.  One I remember was they launched a rocket and then zoomed the camera in on some object left on the pad.  Somebody who knew the rocket yelled "That's the steering drive" as the rocket started to sway and then zoomed and looped all over the island.  Some brave soul got up on the otpcal tracker and tried to guide the radars on the rocket visually so the command destruct antennas had a chance to point at it.  It was just looping all over so fast that the antennas couldn't slew that fast.  Finally, tne thing plunged into a sand dune and exploded.

Another story was a rocket that was supposed to arc over into an orbital path, but the timer that was to start the course change failed, and it just kept going up and up.  Nobody knew exactly where it was going to come down.  Due to Coriolus effects, they were pretty sure it would end up somewhere in the Atlantic, but not sure how far off the coast.  They had to sit there with the radar until well after midnight before they could be sure it would be safe.

So, LOTS of stuff went boom back then.

Then, there were range safety oopses.  Due to ocean swells, it was possble for small fishing boats to be missed when they swept the area.  Some guys were out there in a 16 foot boat and had a Nike first stage drop out of the sky at a couple thousand miles per hour a few hundred feet from their boat.  I think they were tossed dozens of feet in the air.
Jon
There were a series of training videos made in the 70s by the DoD, and used across NATO countries, to stress the importance of taking EMI/EMC issues seriously in defence systems, and giving guidance about how to proceed. The first video was basically to scare you into taking things seriously, by showing a series of calamities caused by various interference issues. Quite a few of those were large rockets, performing some spectacular inappropriate manoeuvres. Thankfully most of them did receive and correctly process the self-destruct command.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Starship/SuperHeavy orbital Flight Test LIVE
« Reply #74 on: April 26, 2023, 05:49:43 am »
How much explosive charge does a typical large rocket carry and what's left after it destructs? There are a lot of big, heavy metal components and it seems unlikely that they all just vaporize. The self destruct gets rid of all the fuel and oxidizer but there must be quite a few big heavy chunks raining down.
 


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