...that investors will only put up with so much "progressive failure" from these blown-up launches before insurers stop carrying the risks and Musk's space ride ends up grounded.

These launches aren't insured in that SpaceX isn't reimbursed for the loss of their hardware. They're paying it out of their own pocket.

They probably do have some calamity insurance, but that's minimal.

Yeah there's no point in having insurance if you can cover the costs of a loss out of pocket. It's important to remember that insurance is negative expected cash value. Otherwise, no insurance company would offer it. It's only positive expected value if losses have a risk of bankrupting you.

His rockets aren't, but the payloads he carries for his customers are.

If it's deemed to risky (I know... rockets are always risky) then his customers won't get insurance for their payloads, or it will cost them too many arms and legs on top of what it usually costs, and they won't fly with him.

It's not just a case of how deep Musk's paper pockets are.

Because being billions over budget and years late to deliver is a better business model...?

"being billions over budget and years late to deliver is a better business model...?"

It is if your lobbyists can bribe 'persuade' enough congressmen to keep the billions flowing.

Elon Musk owns 42% of SpaceX and holds 79% of the voting rights. So for better or worse, SpaceX does what he tells it to. The only recourse any other investors have is to sell.

Musk's wealth is mostly paper. If confidence is lost, then that will take a dent. With it, will go the funds for his various enterprises.

He is lighting an awful lot of money on fire. A chunk of it is other people's money. At some point, people will stop giving him money to use a cigar lighter fodder.

From what I gather both Super Heavy and Starship were destroyed by their respective Automated Self Destruct (ASD) systems, most likely because they strayed out of their pre-programmed boundaries.

Most likely Musk will take want the ASD to be programmed more leniently to increase the chances of success. I believe if the ASD had been throttled down somewhat the entire flight might have had a successful outcome. Now SpaceX will have to do it all over again. Each flight costs them about $100 million or more and they need dozens of flights to let NASA entrust them with ferrying their astronauts to the Moon.

Have we had any confirmation of the self destruct? I've read lots of conjecture, but nothing official or even in the news. If it truly did self destruct at 150km altitude, I'd think that the space junk it left behind would be a pretty big issue...

It is not even close to orbital velocity, so it's all come back down in a hurry

I’ve not seen any confirmation of what happened, but my understanding from reports I’ve read is that it hadn’t (and wasn’t intended to) reach orbital speed, so unless the detonation accelerated some debris to orbital speed the resulting detritus will have found its way back to the surface somewhere.

Its probably ended up in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Must countries would start to get ironic, if not outright sarcastic, if SpaceX dropped its rubbish on their territory.

The "leniency" in the programming of the Flight Termination System (FTS) is dictated by the launch licence, and while Elon Musk doesn't respect many things, he does respect those.

>>to increase the chances of success.

What is it with commentards and explosion=fail? SpaceX iterate in the real world, chosing to spend their money on publicity friendly RUDs rather than iterating on paper and expecting a flawless lauch first time. Remind me again which company is launching a couple of largely resuable rockets a week, and tell me how many Starliners have left the launch pad... and who is in bigger dire straits.

This latest iteration was a success - it proved that many of the things that have changed since the last launch worked. It demonstrated where the shortfalls are and what needs tweaking and, believe it or not, his Muskiness actually does have some rocket scientists who analyze the data and make changes to the production line as new information arrives... changes that mean some equipment will never fly, despite being built, becasue of known shortfalls in real life performance.

>>Now SpaceX will have to do it all over again.

Well duh! Musk has stated many times that SpaceX iterate in the real world, not in models. It is the way he set the whole operation up. It worked for Falcon, it will probably work for Starship.

>> Each flight costs them about $100 million or more and they need dozens of flights to let NASA entrust them with ferrying their astronauts to the Moon

Cost is, for given values, irrelevent and $100 million is peanuts for space - what is the difference, in cost, between making prototypes and testing them in the real world, and not making prototypes and failing to launch?

As for the many flights required - indeed. But that is (yet again) expected and part of the Musky business plan.

Just in case anyone gets the wrong idea and thinks that I orbit the man's fundament, that is not the case - he is a detestable human being who happens to have persuaded a lot of people that he is the man to get to space reliably and cheaply (cf. Senate Launch System/Boeing/SLS). His approach to the business of actually getting there is refeshingly different to ULA/SLS/BO and is proven to work (Falcon 9 launches now happen every couple of days and no-one bats an eyelid because they "never" go wrong... and the Falcon program nearly broke Space X)

Icon becasue everyone loves a RUD

Maybe one of the reasons he bought Twitter was so he could be in complete control of something that would keep him in the spotlight. With SpaceX he is pretty constrained in terms of engineering, process, regulation and the-real-world, whereas Twitter is his to fuck up as he wants.

If you take SpaceX, Tesla and X/Twitter as three data points, it seems to indicate that the degree of success may be inversely proportional to his degree of hands on. Maybe entrepeneurship and management aren't always the same skillset.

SpaceX iterate in the real world, chosing to spend their money on publicity friendly RUDs ...

And dumping hundreds of tons of rubbish in the sea, where even throwing an empty baked bean tin off a yacht is illegal.

Most of which ios stainless steel.

Compared to the daily utput of plastic in all forms that we dump into our oceans, an artificial reef made out of stainless steel is not so bad.

Yes, you are absolutely right. We should ban SpaceX and their fully and nearly-fully reusable rockets and only allow those companies that dispose of the entire rocket into the sea every single time.

Absolutely. He's doing what NASA would never be allowed to do, rapidly progressing launch technology through testing prototypes. It's only politics that means this has to be down by a private company, the actual individuals doing the work would be the same talented Tefal-heads whoever employs them.

"doing what NASA would never be allowed to do"

Both SpaceX and NASA are bound to FAA approval and both operate under the same operational restrictions.

If you listen before you speak you might not show so much ignorance.

At separation the booster is on its way to the sea between Florida and Cuba. The plan was to turn around, relight the middle ring of ten engines and go most of the way back to Texas before a controlled drop onto the sea. One of the ten engines did not relight then one of the center three went out followed by several more on the middle ring. The FTS must have worked out that the booster would leave the cleared area so it terminated the flight. Weather radar showed a circle of debris in the area cleared for the flight.

The oxygen level on the upper stage showed a sudden drop. The FTS must have worked out it could not get all the way to the reserved area north or Hawaii so it terminated the flight. Weather radar showed a long line of debris falling in the cleared area in the Gulf of Mexico.

All debris remained inside the cleared area. Extending the cleared area will not prevent booster engines shutting down during the boost back burn. It will not prevent the large loss of LOX on the upper stage either.

Musk thinks rocket science is hard so he listens to rocket scientists. He thinks building cars is medium difficulty so he half listens to automotive engineers. He believes social media is easy so he does not listen to anyone at TwitX. The results speak for themselves.

Falcon 1 almost broke SpaceX. Falcon 9 continues to set launch, landing, and reuse records.

In the process, the heavy-lift rocket even destroyed a chunk of its own launch pad. That mess earned SpaceX 63 corrective actions from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) – all of which the space cadets seemingly took on the chin. As I understand it, SpaceX proposed those 63 corrective actions.

"As I understand it, SpaceX proposed those 63 corrective actions."

The FAA investigation included various findings from a SpaceX-led investigation, but ultimately it was they - the FAA - that proposed the corrective actions.

[1]https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/faa-recommends-63-corrective-actions-to-spacex-in-starship-heavy-incident-report/

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/faa-recommends-63-corrective-actions-to-spacex-in-starship-heavy-incident-report/

Confused about the downvotes. Downvoting because you don't agree, or because you don't like it? The FAA and SpaceX were clear on this, so not agreeing just means you haven't read it properly ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's one of those weird things where the FAA doesn't have the knowledge to actually make the correct proposals because the whole thing is so far outside their normal wheelhouse. So what happens is that basically they investigate together with FAA officials basically just making sure that SpaceX is following the right steps and investigating correctly based on evidence and SpaceX then going to the FAA with it's findings and saying: Here's what we found and what we propose should be changed (or have already changed) and the FAA then turns around and puts those things in it's "standard" reporting and "proposes" those changes to SpaceX.

It's a bit of: "The rules don't really work, but the rules must be followed" type of deal

Read your link more carefully. All 63 actions came from SpaceX and TechCrunch does not say anything to the contrary, but could have been more clear. Only 57/63 were required for IFT2, which Tech Crunch misses. Most (if not all) of the 57 were published in very vague form around the time of that article. At the time SpaceX were saying they were ready to go because the FAA were happy with the 63 proposed changes (the FAA gave back the same list of changes they got from SpaceX). The FAA spoke up: they were happy that the changes were sufficient but at the time SpaceX had not proved to the FAA that the 57 had been completed. That was the story you will find from the time explained more clearly on specialized Space related web sites like NASA Spaceflight or Spaceflight Now.

I thought the point was to have a number of companies producing space ships... How are the others doing?

I thought the point was to have a number of companies producing space ships... How are the others doing?

Moving slower and breaking things I think. But most impressive to watch it fly, especially with the bass cranked up. After 50+ years, an N1 clone finally almost reached orbit!

But now to see what the data shows. Seeing all the engines lit and some spectacular shock diamonds was pretty cool, and it seemed to blow fewer chunks off the launch area. Given the idea is for a rapidly reusable vehicle, I'm guessing that's going to be the biggest challenge. One video I saw post launch reckoned part of the tower was damaged, so when they'll successfully catch a falling rocket. Also curious how much damage the hot staging would have done. I guess the top of the booster's designed to be easily replaced though. Bigger challenge is probably figuring out why the booster failed to re-ignite it's engines, but I imagine the seperation's more stressful than a Musk divorce. Scott Manley has a video suspecting fuel starvation, which must be a FUN! challenge to solve with the forces involved.

Hardly an N1 clone...

The only real similarities are the sheer number of engines and the fact that it uses hot staging (although I don't recall the N1 ever getting that far)

Shhh! You're not allowed to mention competitors' issues whilst the analy inclined are desperately Musky bashing ...

No sign of new Glenn, and SLS is a dinosaur moving at a glacial pace too.

Musk being a nob is a given, but on the test-and-iterate model they are bang on. Consider how Gemini and Apollo advanced quickly by all up testing. Computer models only get you so far.

If anything happens 'unexpectedly' on the other contenders ships expect another 5-10 years delay, minimum.

Musk being a nob Nazi is a given

But like Henry Ford, he gets away with it because he's rich.

Or, like Wernher von Braun, useful to the American military machine.

Ahhh reductio al Hitlerum. Didn't take long.

Have a look at the alternative development flow. One of the main “competitors”, Ariane 6, has yet to run its engines *once* for a full-length burn, in on-ground test. They keep delaying, because they are concerned about various risks. In the mean time, they’ve *built*, yes actually fully built, the first full series of *14 production flight models*. Without any data at all from test. Not just not-flight-tested, not even hot-fire-tested. That money is already spent, at well over €100M per launcher. They assume everything will work like in simulation, and if it doesn’t, then some retrofit mod is actually going to be possible.

On the other hand, Ariane have had over 250 launches since late 1970s with about ten losses. Which suggests they know what they are doing

That demonstrates ArianeSpace are excellent at operating rockets. Design is harder to asses because their design was constrained by a very damaging funding model. Half the funding (commercial launch) was taken by SpaceX and partially returned by Amazon/Kuiper. ESA have promised a more sane funding system. We are beginning to see if Ariane are any good at turning design into late launches. (All new rockets launch late but some are later than others.)

for both a very successful test and a great show for those watching.

I'm still concerned at the amount of leakage from the "knee" of the water deluge system every time it fires - but there's quite alot of water taking a right angle bend in a pipe which isn't well supported by concrete... I am surprised it's such a sharp corner, rather than a more gentle curve.

I don't think those are leaks. Don't have a source, but I remember reading it's intentional. Not sure why though - indicators?

Prevention/mitigation of water-hammer I suspect

I'd be interested to see a source on that - I haven't seen anything on the knees which looks like it might be the cause, but no-one else seems to comment on it, so I have almost certainly missed something.

If they were a leak I suppose it would likely get *worse* during deluge, which doesn't appear to be the case.

Seems to be a bit of [1]a Pyrrhic victory to me. I thought the innovation of SpaceX was a reusable first stage. They might want to restart testing that part of their rocket.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

There was no loss above and beyond what was intended for the flight, in what way could that possibly be considered pyrrhic?

The aim here is fully, and rapidly, reusable - but this was always a test with the hardware being discarded in pieces at the bottom of the ocean.

"Yet, there is one organization that seems less than chuffed about last week's endeavors – and that is, once again, the FAA, which chose the word "mishap" over "progress" or "test."

"The FAA will oversee the SpaceX-led mishap investigation to ensure SpaceX complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements," "

I wouldn't read too much into the wording of the FAA here. "mishap" is just the standard word for the standard form and process they'll use for the investigation. No-one's intentionally flown a rocket they knew would likely blow up before so the FAA doesn't have the standardized words or processes set up to account for those sorts of tests. So everything becomes a mishap. Whether it's 2 aircraft unintentionally getting a bit close in a traffic pattern or a multi-million pound rocket (expectedly) going KABOOM!

18.1 *tonnes* of fuel per second?? That's mad! (But true).

Super Heavy Booster capacity is 3400t of propellant - so roughly 3 minutes of burn at that rate.