Probably right after he makes the main page mine crypto
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The N1 design was fundamentally sound, it was the strangled budget that doomed the rocket. The Soviet government was not prepared to fund the construction of a test stand for the first stage so they could never actually all the fire the engines without launching the rocket. So they never identified the underlying problems with the KORD computer.
Vasily Mishin who inherited the N1 programme after the death of Sergei Korolev was convinced that a fifth launch would have succeeded. The N1 had been substantially improved in those test flights - and most Soviet rockets, including the R7/Soyuz and Proton had successive failures early in their careers before they were debugged.
Rather than being able to test stages, individual NK15 engines were test fired after they were randomly selected from the production line. But there was a second design decision regarding the Kuznetsov engines on the first stage which incorporated burst disks. When they were fired they required rebuilding before they could be put on a rocket.
The NK15 engines themselves turned out to be amazing - especially since they came from a company that had no long history of designing rocket motors - not least that the Soviets perfected staged combustion which the US didn’t manage for many years. Kuznetsov was working on a more powerful NK33 engine for an upgraded N1 rocket when the programme was cancelled. Rather than scrapping the NK33s as demanded by the Kremlin, they were put into store until the early 1990s when they were sold to Aerojet for powering the Antares rocket. They are still some of the most efficient and powerful engines ever built. Genius.
And compare that achievement to modern Russia - what a tragedy.
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If I recall correctly, there was no plans to recover or splashdown this rocket, and all that was being tested was the launch phase to clearing the tower. It was always going to be destroyed by the range safety officer at some point after leaving the tower and before exiting the safety zone.
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Its kinda tough to hide a rocket exploding. Especially if you are not a government. They tend to be kinda visible and spray debris all over a place.
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I was on the fence about spending the rest of my life on Mars with Elon and Lindell anyway.
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On one hand, it is exciting that we have reclaimed the technology of the Saturn V, creating a rocket that surpasses it in payload capability and could be used for future space missions. And I want that to succeed.
On the other hand, Musk acts like he is involved in this and so:
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Nope. The stated mission was to orbit and splash down safely in the Pacific. So, by the mission parameters, this was an abject failure. It was failing even before it got off the launchpad. you could already tell it was struggling at that point and not totally in control and not all the rockets were firing. Shit was falling off of it all the way up. They were applauding and cheering as I watched in horror as the damn thing was clearly out of control.
Honestly, getting that many rockets to fire perfectly and in sync is orders of magnitude greater than landing a single booster has been. This design is problematic at best. But Musk is desperate to reclaim the lead now that Artemis has already orbited around the moon once. He is losing control and seeing money slipping through his fingers. The more times his rockets fail, the more difficult it will be for him to get launch contracts.
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I don’t think this says as much about SpaceX’s commitment to transparency so much as it says about Elon’s need for constant attention driving him to show stuff off before it’s ready for prime time.
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That’s one way to look at it. But in a large multi-engine config you’ve got real-time control and feedback loops that are modulating engine throttles to maintain stability in those key first moments of lift-off. I’d expect to see some of that wobbling with any development flights of this platform (which is what this flight was). As to stuff falling off, I’m reasonably confident that those were ice sheets. The supercooling required for the fuel setup in this version of Starship means that you’re going to get thermal junctions at the outer skin that will experience rapid changes in forces (meaning that ice buildup is easy, but so is shedding it). There wasn’t anything I could see in those initial video feeds that suggested it was losing structural components (ie, when Shuttles would accidentally shed heat tiles) in those moments. I expect we’ll get post-mortems from SpaceX in the weeks ahead that will shed light on what did and didn’t happen, as they have done in the past, so maybe it was yeeting bits and pieces of more than just ice, but it sure didn’t look like it.
As far as these things go, today’s launch was wildly more successful than a lot of folks were expecting, and that’s really something given the scope of the Starship project.
Edited to correct some phrasing and punctuation, and also to add: Just saw some new video and there does appear to have been at least one moment at about T+30 where something blew apart near the base (one post I saw speculated it might have been the HPU) and was definitely not ice shed. Will continue to be interesting to see what’s learned as new footage comes out.
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It really, really is!
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Heh, I see what you did there.
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That’s true, but Virgin Orbit (which just went defunct) certainly seemed to try to trick people in real time during their failed launch. The “telemetry” video they were showing during the launch turned out to be a pre-recorded animation that wasn’t showing what was actually happening, and they went so far as to send out a tweet that they had successfully reached orbit when they had done no such thing. The retraction they had to issue later was an embarrassment.
Any failures of the Starship test program don’t really have anything to do with the Falcon 9 launch system, which has been shown to be pretty reliable at this point. (Per Wikipedia, since June 2010, rockets from the Falcon 9 family have been launched 223 times, with 221 full mission successes, one partial failure and one total loss of the spacecraft.) I don’t think they’re at much risk of losing contracts for the Falcon 9 as long as they remain cheaper than the competition.
As for just how big of a “success” or “failure” this flight was, I tend to agree with this author who has been closely following the launch industry for years:
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Musk’s (to me) rather odd criteria for success sounded more like practice for what would be included in their next prospectus to investors.
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And perhaps the impossible schedule it was saddled with.
It should be noted that Russia back in day put much more effort into engine component water flow testing (determine/verify Q, Cd, Cv, flow patterns) than full engine hot fires, whereas here in the US (I can’t speak for SpaceX) the opposite has been the case.
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MuskBros are telling me that the launch was a “Complete Success”. And I say “Right up until the point when it wasn’t.”
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“The operation was a success but the patient died.”
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‘If my rocket goes up, who cares how it comes down?
That’s not my department’, says Elon von Braun.
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“Nazi, Shmazi”, says Elon von Braun.
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