John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Yep, nothing easy about big rockets. Good thing Elon has lots of money and an ego bigger than his rocket. It will work eventually.
Space X
- Thread starter ngatimozart
- Start date
FormerDirtDart
Well-Known Member
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Have to be impressed with “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, a quote that appeared on CNN. More than a few pollies would like to hire the spin doctor on that quote!
Call me a negative nellie .................. but I think they need a flame diverter and a deluge system.......
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #46
The problem was the failure of the ship and booster to seperate. The first part of the corkscrew was a partial flip manoeuvre to induce the separation by inertia. Space X said on their live stream that once it rose past the launch tower everything else was icing on the cake. They will have gained aa lot of data from this and don't forget that it was the first test flight of a completely new rocket system; one that is the largest ever attempted. The thrust was double that of the NASA SLS rocket launched last November.
An ABC Australia interview with Dr Garrett Reisman, a former NASA astronaut who left NASA and was high up in the Space X food chain, on their Falcon booster program.
- Thread Starter Thread Starter
- #47
They are working on a water deluge system. They always knew that it wouldn't be ready for this launch. They had barged 4 large tanks from their Florida operation at Cape Canaveral. They built a bund to protect the fuel storage tanks in the tank farm and that has worked. The lack of a flame diverter has been commented upon since they did the booster static fire.
Lab Padre video of the impacts of the launch.
Yes it's a cracker and one that they have used before when some of their ship prototypes self destructed.
They like their quirky names, much like Rocket Lab. The Space X complex at Boca Chico is known as Starbase, their launch control centre is Star Command, the chopsticks and lift system used to lift the ships / boosters on / off the OLM (Orbital Launch Mount) is known as Mechazilla. Some of their ships / barges have names such as Bob, Read The Instructions etc.
NASA Space flight video of the launch.
They had the windows of one oof their vehicles blown out by the launch and I think it's the vehicle shown in the Lab Padre damages video above. I would surmise that the broken windows is FOD damage.
Masquerader
Member
The Starship, now holding the title of the biggest space launch vehicle ever built and flown has proven that an SLV about 400 feet tall is feasible. As a matter of fact, Version 3 of the Starship under study by SpaceX is 490 feet tall, rivaling the proposed but unbuilt Sea Dragon rocket in height.