News: 1607579833

I seem to remember that the Apollo missions also ended in a big bang. (Well except the one that, you know, failed.)

Seriously, the craft proved it can do everything that SpaceX has claimed it would be able to do. How is that a failure?

Edit: Yes, I get it, this is the Register being the Register but even this frequent Musk sceptic can recognise this as an extraordinary achievement.

They claimed it would explode on landing?

the fireworks display was just a bonus.

Pity there was no free popcorn

Popping out to the shops for popcorn, marshmallows and something to drink.

Almost. Musk said only one in three chance of a successful landing so a big boom was the most likely result. I am amazed SN8 performed its lithobraking manoeuvre on the landing pad. I thought it would RUD earlier and make multiple splash-downs. This one was doing really well until the exhaust became engine-rich during the landing burn.

SN9 has been waiting for the test pad to clear. If fixing the pressure in the small methane tank can be done quickly we may say another starship RUD this year.

Well yes, iirc Musks 1 in 3 chance of success came with a near guarantee it would result in rapid unscheduled disassembly at some point.

That it achieved everything bar the landing successfully IS a great success,and theyve got all the data they needed from it, 63 years ago this week the US,because NASA hadnt even been invented then, couldn't even get a rocket half the height & a fraction of the weight off the launch pad without it exploding.

I think people get too distracted by the pretty fireworks and take it for granted rockets can even attempt to land.

Go SpaceX

Explode the bourgeoisie!

Can we send the richest up first?

At least this rich one is spending money on research and building things. There are lots of rich ones who are just famous and hog the limelight

Can we send the richest up first?

They've signed up at Virgin Galactic

The flight was a success because SpaceX proved almost all of the concepts. Even the landing technique. The reason it blew up was because it was still going a bit too fast on touchdown. It was still going too fast because of a fuel problem in the oxygen header tank (which is only used for landing) resulting in insufficent thrust.

What was achieved:

Use of three of the brand-new Raptor engines to launch the craft

Engine cut-off and manoevre into bellyflop position

Skydiving back down under control without RUD

Engine relight and landing flip

SN8 blew up on the LANDING pad. If it had blown up on the LAUNCH pad, the test wouldn't have been considered as successful :)

It was a fuel header tank pressure issue that resulted in lost of thrust - which is why the exhaust turns green during landing as the oxygen reacted with the copper in the engine instead!

Oxygen in a high energy environment is such fun: will react with almost anything...

Scott Manley put it best when he said the problem was "an engine-rich exhaust"

How many Falcon first stages didn't make it back to the scutters for cleaning? Now a pinned recovery doesn't even make the news!

Someone famous in the field of writing proverbial comments said something about not going too quickly and trapping simians. Trump has tried to armtwist NASA into galloping into the blinding headlights of endeavour and, as is his want, to set themselves up for glorius failure. Musky seems to develop at a jog but his abilities seems to lay in both the concurrent production of test vehicles and, more importantly, the rapid flow of information from each experiment into the next. This makes each step as productive as possible and allows the actual project development process to be as rapid as it can be.

Indeed. SpaceX's Falcon rockets have had 102 successful missions from 104 launches, giving a 98% success rate, despite us all remembering the odd fireball. When Falcons did RUD, Musk wasn't despondent.

Therefore, I'm inclined to believe him if he says he's happy with this Starship's test, despite the Boom!

This...

Plus the fact that this prototype seemed to lack any serious attempt at, y'know, actual landing gear at all.

I've the feeling the craft wasn't expected to land without rapid disassembly, and that it got a lot further than people actually expected. The whole flight showed enough "you really don't want to see this happen" from the engine housing as it was..

This is why we

Succinct and to the point.

Ag

re

ed

Anyone who has read Ignition would know that RUDs are part and parcel of the learning process.

Fireworks now help to avoid future unwanted fireworks involving passengers.

I like the way SpaceX consistently think outside of the usual boxes and deliver the goods.

Impressed by the skydiving and flip!

If your prototype didn't blow up at least once in testing I'm not getting on the production version because I don't know what you forgot to test.

True, but it did use the three atmospheric raptor engines that will be used. There will also be three vacuum raptors in the production model (total of six).

The begruding tone of this article doesn't suprise me at all, this is the norm with this boring blighty blog. The fact this prototype vehicle, contructed in the open for all to witness, made it as far as it did does indeed mean it was a resounding success. No vehicle like it has been attempted before. Its reusable full-flow staged combustion engines are the first to be mass produced and 3 of them lifted it to the 12km target altitude (with staged shut-downs of 2 of them as it got lighter and higher). It then performed an unbelieveble 'belly flop' manouver, and with incrediable stability sky-dived back to earth. 80 odd tonnes of steel with massive aerodynamic loads gracefully free falling back to earth! It then re-lit 2 of its engines in-flight, while horizontal with seconds to go, and righted itself almost instantly and right on target of the landing zone. To only then to meet terra-firma with slightly more speed due to fuel starvation as the header tank (located 50m at the top of the ship) didn't have quite the umph to feed those hungrty engines in the last few critical meters. An incredible feat of design and engineering and deserves nothing but celebration for this histric acheivement.

If you don't like the tone of the reporting here, you're free to get your news elsewhere. As a Brit, my sense of humour matches with the author's. This article doesn't come across as begrudging at all; actually quite celebratory really.

It's an exciting step forwards and the fiery end was just headline-grabbing enough to get the attention of those who don't follow this stuff as closely as us.

@jon, From your third setence on, you are mostly correct. However I doubt the engines are being mass produced, that would imply cosumer market levels of production and I doubt that such a market exists.

Perhaps standardised would describe it better.

For what it is worth, the style and tone of The Register is what makes it stand out and what makes it worth reading as opposed to others with similar content.

And that applies to all of the press coverage I've seen so far!

I guess the "blows up", "ends in failure" and similar draw the readers in more.

The various teams covering the event live predicted what the headlines would be long before they were published.

SN8 was an unqualified success, I say that because it was all about the data aquired during:

1. Launch and engine performance during the ascent

2. Control surfaces successfully managing the attitude of the rocket descent

3. Switch to header tanks, re-ignition of the engines and successful flip back to vertical

4. Landing

I would argue that data gathered about an overly hot landing is even more valuable than that of a perfect one. They now know about the pressure issue in the header tank so in my opinion SN8 could not have performed it's job any better than it did. Once SN8 had landed it was effectively redundant anyway as SN9 is almost ready to go complete with improvements on SN8.

Unqualified success? Hell yeah :)

I expect the esteemed mr. Hyneman has been watching.

Question: What's wrong with just landing like normal?

This seems to use a lot of fuel to do what a wing and an unpowered glide and normal landing could do more safely.

The extra mass of a wing would require extra fuel to launch. A wing, with its required control surfaces, would add complexity. Landing as a glider would require a runway instead of a pad (ruling out launch trajectories that require a landing at sea). Landing as a glider would require an undercarriage and the structural reinforcement to support it - yet more mass. Landing as a glider would require a means of scrubbing velocity - parachutes mounted near the hot engines, or brakes on the wheels, or tickets firing from the nose.

But I'm not an aerospace engineer.

Doesn't work on the Moon, probably won't work on Mars.

Very impressive.

Unfortunately this is the way to get solid results - you test one thing at a time, and it costs time and money, but is rewarding when you can send up the finished product and it performs as intended, and you know all the gotchas have been ironed out.

Not like the MAX which did not perform as intended.