GLS
Well-known member
Here is the famous van
News Changes to the SpaceX BFR rocket.
- Thread starter RGClark
- Start date
GLS
Well-known member
Kinda looks like it would be cleaner if it just blew up in there 
GLS
Well-known member
Thunder Chicken
Fine Threads since 2008
RisingFury
OBSP developer
Ouch. They can't even be trusted with FTS =/
Thunder Chicken
Fine Threads since 2008
They use autogenous pressurization so they won't really pop explosively unless the tank structure is completely compromised. If you just punch a hole in them it will be like boiling off the liquid in an aerosol can when you depress the nozzle. The delay in full vehicle destruction may have been due to the lack of atmospheric drag. At 39 km the air density is something like 0.3% of that at sea level. It had fall into the denser atmosphere to hit a second "Max-Q" before the aerodynamic loads were enough to break up the vehicle.
But, yeah, long story short - if they had to terminate the flight shortly after launch, this system is a disaster in the making. You'd have a wayward rocket gently venting clouds of oxygen and methane, and aerodynamic loads might not be enough to tear apart the vehicle. It would be more an unguided thermobaric bomb.
Glad it went out over the ocean and didn't decide to become the MOAB for Boca Chica.
GLS
Well-known member
I wouldn't put any money in another launch this year.
Thunder Chicken
Fine Threads since 2008
It looks like one of the nuclear bomb test sites in Nevada in the 1950s. Orbital launch stand and foundations are totally trashed, and probably need to be removed completely and the pit refilled before anything new can be constructed unless they decide they want to move the tower, or do some janky form work around the existing rebar. Half of the tank farm needs to be replaced (and protected better). The launch tower took some damage but looks fixable. All sorts of equipment within half a mile might have random debris impact damage. Just figuring out what is broken and what is OK is going to take a while.
Concrete and refractory wears pretty well until it doesn't. If the surface is uncracked, you might just get some ablative erosion. But if you start getting any cracking, then there is a small surface for gas to impinge against and apply a force which will have shear and tensile components that concrete does not tolerate very well. Once the force is great enough to start chipping up more concrete, more surface will be exposed, and from there things get exponentially worse, really fast. It seems that the surface slab wasn't too terribly thick either, because it basically it basically drilled through it in seconds and started throwing whole slabs of concrete and dirt up before it even started to move. It wasn't just slightly too weak, it was blasted away almost instantaneously.
They seem to have thought that since it held up under roughly half the thrust, that full thrust wouldn't be such a big deal. But thrust is the force on the vehicle, and the static and dynamic pressures inside the rocket plume and against the pad aren't spatially or temporally uniform or even necessarily linear with that thrust. The stagnation pressure against the pad exerted by the jets coming from the engines closer to vehicle center line must be much higher than those on the periphery in order to push the gas outward radially. It's a really complex compressible flow environment, and instead of doing due-diligence analysis of the thrust plume against the pad, they spit-balled an extrapolation and called it good.
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I hope they solve this before trying to fly from 39-A...
Please don't tear up LC39 like that; we kinda like that pad!
Please don't tear up LC39 like that; we kinda like that pad!
More likely is NASA simply doesn't let them before it's solved. They already told them no flights until launch is proven anyway.
Thunder Chicken
Fine Threads since 2008
Cleanup at Ground Zero of Hiroshima Stage 0 begins:
Thunder Chicken
Fine Threads since 2008
Looking harder at this picture:
You can see the rectangular foundation on the left has its cylindrical piling underneath it, but the one to the right is missing. The base of the metal structure that looks something like a house projecting from the support on the right should have been at ground level on concrete. You can see where it attaches to the support has separated. You can see in the following still from one of the videos I posted that that metal structure is bent upwards:
So it definitely looks like at least one of the foundation pilings was completely destroyed, and that the entire pad tilted toward it, bending this metal structure upward. That metal structure is on the opposite side of the OLM from the tower, suggesting the OLM tilted away from the tower during the launch. I really think the angle the vehicle made relative to vertical as it left the OLM wasn't a tower avoidance maneuver, but the angle the OLM tilted before the vehicle was released for liftoff.
You can see the rectangular foundation on the left has its cylindrical piling underneath it, but the one to the right is missing. The base of the metal structure that looks something like a house projecting from the support on the right should have been at ground level on concrete. You can see where it attaches to the support has separated. You can see in the following still from one of the videos I posted that that metal structure is bent upwards:
So it definitely looks like at least one of the foundation pilings was completely destroyed, and that the entire pad tilted toward it, bending this metal structure upward. That metal structure is on the opposite side of the OLM from the tower, suggesting the OLM tilted away from the tower during the launch. I really think the angle the vehicle made relative to vertical as it left the OLM wasn't a tower avoidance maneuver, but the angle the OLM tilted before the vehicle was released for liftoff.
IMHO indeed, OLM seriously damagedLooking harder at this picture:
View attachment 33143
You can see the rectangular foundation on the left has its cylindrical piling underneath it, but the one to the right is missing. The base of the metal structure that looks something like a house projecting from the support on the right should have been at ground level on concrete. You can see where it attaches to the support has separated. You can see in the following still from one of the videos I posted that that metal structure is bent upwards:
View attachment 33144
So it definitely looks like at least one of the foundation pilings was completely destroyed, and that the entire pad tilted toward it, bending this metal structure upward. That metal structure is on the opposite side of the OLM from the tower, suggesting the OLM tilted away from the tower during the launch. I really think the angle the vehicle made relative to vertical as it left the OLM wasn't a tower avoidance maneuver, but the angle the OLM tilted before the vehicle was released for liftoff.
GLS
Well-known member
I'm not so sure... if the base is indeed tilted, the angle seems quite small (look at the pictures in the previous posts). Plus, from the footage, debris started flying just as the vehicle left the ground, so by that point the digging had just begun and the underground structure was just starting to get blasted, which means the vehicle left a still leveled pad.I really think the angle the vehicle made relative to vertical as it left the OLM wasn't a tower avoidance maneuver, but the angle the OLM tilted before the vehicle was released for liftoff.
I don't know if the tower avoidance tilt was nominal, but by that time the vehicle had lost 9% of the thrust and left in an "unbalanced thrust" configuration, so that makes it go a bit sideways.
Thunder Chicken
Fine Threads since 2008
And there it is ... FAA is shutting down SpaceX Superheavy/Starship operations pending conclusion of an FAA mishap investigation.
www.space.com
Apparently quite a lot of debris rained down over inhabited areas and near environmentally sensitive wildlife areas.
I think it's pretty obvious that SpaceX did not do engineering due diligence in their analysis of the rocket affects on the pad, and the FTS system didn't really terminate the flight properly. I think Musk was getting cocky and was OK with shooting from the hip for the sake of expediency, but this was a big, highly visible screw-up and they need some adult supervision.
I don't think a Starship orbital flight test is happening in 2023 and I seriously don't think a moon landing in Starship is happening in 2025, or possibly even ever. SpaceX jumped the shark here.
SpaceX Starship launch under FAA investigation after raining potentially hazardous debris on homes and beaches
"The FAA will oversee the mishap investigation of the Starship/Super Heavy test mission," FAA officials wrote.
www.space.com
Apparently quite a lot of debris rained down over inhabited areas and near environmentally sensitive wildlife areas.
I think it's pretty obvious that SpaceX did not do engineering due diligence in their analysis of the rocket affects on the pad, and the FTS system didn't really terminate the flight properly. I think Musk was getting cocky and was OK with shooting from the hip for the sake of expediency, but this was a big, highly visible screw-up and they need some adult supervision.
I don't think a Starship orbital flight test is happening in 2023 and I seriously don't think a moon landing in Starship is happening in 2025, or possibly even ever. SpaceX jumped the shark here.
GLS
Well-known member
Screw-up?! Wasn't this a tremendous success??? Everybody is saying so... 
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