Space In General

R1600Turbo
It was the first test of something NEVER done before. A debris field was expected. Live a little.
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No, I think a Starship rocket standing on the launching pad was expected. Certainly hoped for.

I accept that many things went exactly correctly in this flight, and that very good data was gathered, but I do NOT accept that crashing into the ground was a successful mission. They crashed a great many boosters before they learned to land them, which they now do routinely. And successfully. None of those "rapid unscheduled disassembly" events would be called successful, as they failed to land an intact, reusable booster. Why would this be successful, when they utterly failed to land an intact, possibly reusable Starship? Lots of good information? Absolutely. Success? Not in the slightest.
 
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wfooshee
No, I think a Starship rocket standing on the launching pad was expected. Certainly hoped for.

I accept that many things went exactly correctly in this flight, and that very good data was gathered, but I do NOT accept that crashing into the ground was a successful mission. They crashed a great many boosters before they learned to land them, which they now do routinely. And successfully. None of those "rapid unscheduled disassembly" events would be called successful, as they failed to land an intact, reusable booster. Why would this be successful, when they utterly failed to land an intact, possibly reusable Starship? Lots of good information? Absolutely. Success? Not in the slightest.
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Elon himself before the flight predicted it being a 30% success. They pretty much got to about 90% I'd say. They now have TONS of data they can instantly transfer to the next flight, which looks like will happen very soon. Next prototype (key word there) unit should be on it's way to the 2nd launch platform on Monday. In rocket testing, failures are always an option. Because you learn from them. Same deal here. They know what went wrong and it likely will not happen again. That is why you test.

Anyone calling this a failure just doesn't get it. End of story.

Edit: Confirmation of SN9 roll-out on Monday.




 
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Danoff
30% chance of... what exactly? Landing? Not blowing up? Like... success success?
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1/3 chance of landing intact, which as we all saw, it did not.

Sure, the landing was quiet a spectacular fail, but saying the entire thing wasn't successful is just ignorant. Like the old adage goes, "You only fail if you don't learn from it."

What we learned is that the header tanks lost pressure when it was coming in for landing. Assuming that they can correct the issue in the future, and now that they know it's an issue now, I wouldn't call it a complete failure.

Failure of the SN8 in itself? Sure. A failure in the process of engineering a in rocket science? Absolutely not.

I honestly believe it's how one decides to look at it.
 
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Leadfoot530
1/3 chance of landing intact, which as we all saw, it did not.

Sure, the landing was quiet a spectacular fail, but saying the entire thing wasn't successful is just ignorant. Like the old adage goes, "You only fail if you don't learn from it."

What we learned is that the header tanks lost pressure when it was coming in for landing. Assuming that they can correct the issue in the future, and now that they know it's an issue now, I wouldn't call it a complete failure.

Failure of the SN8 in itself? Sure. A failure in the process of engineering a in rocket science? Absolutely not.

I honestly believe it's how one decides to look at it.
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Isn't the idea to carry people safely to distant bodies like the Moon and Mars? Won't the rocket eventually get twenty or thirty Raptor engines?

I see the problem being a big liquid fuel tank in which the fuel sloshes away from the bottom of the tank when the rocket changes attitude into level flight. Does each engine feed from its own header tank? Do several engines share a common header tank? If this problem of fuel starvation can't be solved and made 100% bulletproof, then the entire design concept comes into question, since if even one of the 30(?) engines fails and explodes upon landing, the mission is lost.
 
Dotini
Isn't the idea to carry people safely to distant bodies like the Moon and Mars? Won't the rocket eventually get twenty or thirty Raptor engines?
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One would think from the name that the ides is to carry people to other stars, but one would be wrong.

Dotini
I see the problem being a big liquid fuel tank in which the fuel sloshes away from the bottom of the tank when the rocket changes attitude into level flight. Does each engine feed from its own header tank? Do several engines share a common header tank? If this problem of fuel starvation can't be solved and made 100% bulletproof, then the entire design concept comes into question, since if even one of the 30(?) engines fails and explodes upon landing, the mission is lost.
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As I understand it, that's what happened; not enough fuel flow when the vehicle changed attitude.

This problem has been solved decades ago for aerobatic aircraft. I'm surprised the engineers didn't take that into account. It's not like the technology doesn't exist.
 
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R1600Turbo
Anyone calling this a failure just doesn't get it. End of story.
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Yeah, no. It's not "end of story" because you declare it to be.

Several of the things tested worked just fine and those facets of the test were successful, but as a whole the mission failed with total loss of the craft. It was a mission failure.
Danoff
30% chance of... what exactly? Landing? Not blowing up? Like... success success?
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I think Musk said something like a 1 in 3 chance of getting SN8 back intact, which @R1600Turbo has now mutated into 30% success...

... though that itself begs the question of how what is by his own terms something that landed outside that 30% chance of success envelope and was instead in the 70% chance of failure group is somehow an unqualified success.

Edit: "1/3 chance of completing all mission objectives"


Edit edit: Ah, it was a reply:


"1/3 chance" of Starship "landing in one piece".
 
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Dotini
Won't the rocket eventually get twenty or thirty Raptor engines?
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Nope, this one will have 3 sea level and 3 vacuum engines. It's actually the 2nd stage. It won't be flying to space without help of the booster, which will have around 28 engines.
 
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R1600Turbo
Nope, this one will have 3 sea level and 3 vacuum engines. It's actually the 2nd stage. It won't be flying to space without help of the booster, which will have around 28 engines.
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Will the booster glide back to Earth in level flight then land under power on its tail?

-----

It seems to me that if the mission of SN8 was to complete as much of its test schedule as possible, then it was nearly a complete success. However, if its mission was to deliver a living payload to its destination, then it would have been a complete failure.
 
Dotini
Will the booster glide back to Earth in level flight then land under power on its tail?

-----

It seems to me that if the mission of SN8 was to complete as much of its test schedule as possible, then it was nearly a complete success. However, if its mission was to deliver a living payload to its destination, then it would have been a complete failure.
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Booster will land just like the Falcon 9.

Humans won't ride on this thing for several years.
 
Rossell2
I think sometimes you can only make something succeed by knowing how it can fail.
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Totally, and that's why we test - you won't know what will succeed or fail until you test it. And sometimes they fail as a whole while also being successful in parts, like this mission did.

I mean, I get that "failure" has been a dirty word in schools since probably the mid-1980s and everything, but we don't really have to pretend that failure is success. Sure, some bits of it were good, but as a whole the mission was a failure - the curate's egg of spaceflight. This episode has certainly shone further light on the delusional nature of the cult of Musk (which also leads to fatalities on the roads).
 
Might be a small delay in SN9 going to the pad... :nervous:

Edit: confirmed there were no injuries.



Edit: this is AMAZING!!!

 
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Leadfoot530
Sure, the landing was quiet a spectacular fail, but saying the entire thing wasn't successful is just ignorant. Like the old adage goes, "You only fail if you don't learn from it."
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What do you mean "the entire thing wasn't successful"? Do you mean no part of it was successful? Or that it wasn't a complete success? And are you saying that my post is somehow ignorant? Because you recharacterized my post into something I did not say.

Leadfoot530
What we learned is that the header tanks lost pressure when it was coming in for landing. Assuming that they can correct the issue in the future, and now that they know it's an issue now, I wouldn't call it a complete failure.
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Me neither, and I didn't.

Leadfoot530
I honestly believe it's how one decides to look at it.
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Within some level of reason of course.

Famine
I think Musk said something like a 1 in 3 chance of getting SN8 back intact, which @R1600Turbo has now mutated into 30% success...
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That was the point I was making - that @R1600Turbo had used the word "success" to define that which did not happen.
 
Danoff
That was the point I was making - that @R1600Turbo had used the word "success" to define that which did not happen.
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Hmm, 1/3 is 33.333333333333% of 100%. Close enough. Unless we're just being that stingy.

Edit: this thread is a source of positive vibes for me. I will no longer be responding to anyone with negative comments. If you're going to reply to me with negativity, don't bother, I won't answer. If you don't like what I have to share in here, feel free to block me. Thanks.
 
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R1600Turbo
Edit: this thread is a source of positive vibes for me. I will no longer be responding to anyone with negative comments. If you're going to reply to me with negativity, don't bother, I won't answer. If you don't like what I have to share in here, feel free to block me. Thanks.
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Why is it you have such a low tolerance for people disagreeing with you?
 
20201211_093514.jpg
 
R1600Turbo
Hmm, 1/3 is 33.333333333333% of 100%. Close enough. Unless we're just being that stingy.

Edit: this thread is a source of positive vibes for me. I will no longer be responding to anyone with negative comments. If you're going to reply to me with negativity, don't bother, I won't answer. If you don't like what I have to share in here, feel free to block me. Thanks.
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I think you misunderstood me. I'm saying you yourself used "success" in such a way that this does not qualify. That was my point - your own use of the word disagrees with you.
 
Danoff
What do you mean "the entire thing wasn't successful"? Do you mean no part of it was successful? Or that it wasn't a complete success? And are you saying that my post is somehow ignorant? Because you recharacterized my post into something I did not say.



Me neither, and I didn't.



Within some level of reason of course.



That was the point I was making - that @R1600Turbo had used the word "success" to define that which did not happen.
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I apologize if I came off that way. I ment it more in the way that yes, SN8 can't be considered a full success because we have a prototype spread all over southern Texas.

But calling the entire thing a failure when this flight has done things that were used in fictitious television shows sixty years ago feels...overdramatic?

Not having a handed Starship on the pad shouldn't dicredit all that did go right throughout the rest of the flight. As it was said on the Falcon 9 broadcase shortly before being scrubbed today, it takes a million things for a launch to go smoothly, and one to end in disaster. I'm not going to go around calling SN8 a rousing success, because it wasn't, but the progress that was made should at least be acknowledged.

We don't give grades on tests with one out of ten questions wrong a zero percent, because it's not representative of the full assessment. It's a passing grade with room for improvement. Now if we had human beings on this flight, and the vehicle failed, then yes, we'd look at it different. But we didn't, so we can have these types of failures, and fix them in the future. Now we knoe that the header tanks lost pressure, and we know that that's an issue that needs fixed. Much like the one out of ten answers not correct on the hypothetical test that I mentioned earlier: we have that one problem that we need to review to fix.

Hell, this thing was given a 33.3% chance of landing intact. ait might not have been "expected" not to land, but it wasn't a complete suprise when it didn't.

At the end of the day, success or failure, I'm just here to enjoy what rocket engineers have set out to accomplish. Win, lose or draw, I just want to enjoy it.
 
Leadfoot530
I apologize if I came off that way. I ment it more in the way that yes, SN8 can't be considered a full success because we have a prototype spread all over southern Texas.

But calling the entire thing a failure when this flight has done things that were used in fictitious television shows sixty years ago feels...overdramatic?

Not having a handed Starship on the pad shouldn't dicredit all that did go right throughout the rest of the flight. As it was said on the Falcon 9 broadcase shortly before being scrubbed today, it takes a million things for a launch to go smoothly, and one to end in disaster. I'm not going to go around calling SN8 a rousing success, because it wasn't, but the progress that was made should at least be acknowledged.

We don't give grades on tests with one out of ten questions wrong a zero percent, because it's not representative of the full assessment. It's a passing grade with room for improvement. Now if we had human beings on this flight, and the vehicle failed, then yes, we'd look at it different. But we didn't, so we can have these types of failures, and fix them in the future. Now we knoe that the header tanks lost pressure, and we know that that's an issue that needs fixed. Much like the one out of ten answers not correct on the hypothetical test that I mentioned earlier: we have that one problem that we need to review to fix.

Hell, this thing was given a 33.3% chance of landing intact. ait might not have been "expected" not to land, but it wasn't a complete suprise when it didn't.

At the end of the day, success or failure, I'm just here to enjoy what rocket engineers have set out to accomplish. Win, lose or draw, I just want to enjoy it.
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I don't disagree with any of that. I think the original point was that the twitter response looked crazy. It's fine to say that the test exceeded expectations, and good data was returned, but that's not exactly what the twitter response represented.
 
In other stuff that is space-related, but not Musk-related, both Voyagers - now over 43 years old - have detected a new phenomenon related to solar electrons:



The physics is a little dry, but the upshot is that what the Voyagers have detected are electrons carried outwards by coronal mass ejections at a million miles an hour or so, but which are then accelerated upon reaching the termination shock (where the Sun's own magnetic field starts to wane) by interstellar magnetic field lines to almost the speed of light, which pass by (well, through) the Voyagers in interstellar space; the shockwave from the CME continues at a slower pace, detected later by the spacecraft.
 
Yet another successful launch for the Falcon 9 this morning. 7th flight for this booster, 5th flight for it this year. Showing just how quickly they can turn these things around for another launch if they can have a single booster fly 5 times in 12 months.

131412523_2769146626659630_842095814357361678_o.jpg


Rocket Lab has a launch coming up.



Also, they are preparing to launch the CAPSTONE satellite for NASA, which will be headed to the moon to plan for future manned missions.

 
SN9 has been lifted out of the high bay showing some flap damage. Might be ok to fly after some flap surgery.

 
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Booster 1051.7 has come home a little tipsy. Seems like a solution for surviving rough seas before the recovery team can secure them needs to be found.

 

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