Regarding the likely schedule to try another launch, completely aside from the destruction of the pad, it seems significant that they greatly exceeded the area of effect predicted in their environmental impact statement.
It feels pretty optimistic to expect another approval in the next few months.
As a result of the explosion, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the company’s Starship Super Heavy launch program pending results of a “mishap investigation,” part of standard practice, according to an email from the agency sent to CNBC after the launch. No injuries or public property damage had yet been reported to the agency as of Friday.
Sounds like the FAA wants to determine exactly how incredibly successful this Starship launch was. It figures that an organization devoted to keeping people from killing each other with the fastest most powerful machines ever built might react poorly to a “move fast and break things” engineering style. I wonder how long until all the stupidest people imaginable are clamoring for the FAA to be defunded.
While I hope the FAA does their due diligence here (after all, the more eyes on the launch, the better conclusions can be made), given that the particulate matter was in fact just dirt kicked up by the engines, it seems unlikely that they’ll find anything of consequence.
A return to flight of the Starship / Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. This is standard practice for all mishap investigations.
Since dust in the air is not a threat to public safety, and no injuries have been reported, I think the FAA will probably quickly approve the next launch, especially given that SpaceX already has a mitigation plan.
Also, it’s worth noting that the FAA granted SpaceX a Vehicle Operator Licence good for 5 years:
They don’t have to go through the same full process as the last time. They just have to get through the automatic FAA grounding.
The FAA is doing what they always do. Which includes worrying about ground debris kicked up, as well as falling spaceship parts post the flight termination explosion. Nothing different here than any other rocket failure since long ago.
I’d be far more concerned about the environmental concerns that @Cervaise posted in #342.
Not that they are actual problems worthy of addressing, but just that those regulatory quagmires can be much slower to resolve than the others.
You know, I barely even noticed that the very title of the CNBC article is a lie. The explosion did not spread particulate matter for miles. The explosion was dozens of miles off-shore and affected no one. The launch is what kicked up the cloud of dirt.
The cited “ESGHound” cited said this not long ago:
Let me put it this way: I, ESG HOUND, 100% guarantee that the SpaceX Environmental Plan will be rejected for Boca Chica. You should actually use people who know what they’re doing next time
@elonmuskAnd everyone involved with the @FAA’s NEPA program should resign in disgrace
Such credibility!
China: I made this.
I bet the Chinese rocket never blasted a hole in the ground.
Some fresh details on the launch:
Musk offered a recap of the flight, noting that problems began immediately at liftoff when 3 of the 33 Raptor engines in the vehicle’s Super Heavy booster either failed to start or aborted during startup. “Those engines did not explode, but the system didn’t think they were healthy enough to bring them to full thrust.”
He added that the 30 working engines was the minimum needed for liftoff, causing a distinct lean to the vehicle as it cleared the pad.
That’s very interesting: that they deliberately allowed a launch with less than the full number of engines.
At T+85 seconds, “things really hit the fan,” he said, with the loss of communication with another engine. “Roughly from this point onwards, we lose thrust vector control of the rocket,” he said, meaning it could no longer steer.
This is consistent with our earlier speculation. They really did lose TVC, and things go downhill after that.
Musk said while controllers initiated the flight termination system, it took much longer than expected, about 40 seconds, for explosives to rupture the vehicle’s tanks.
A win for nate, and not the rest of us. There really was a 40 second gap between FTS initiation and breakup. Musk thinks that fixing this will be a long-lead item for relaunch. But he’s still committed to a (hopefully) couple of months.
Lots more details in the article.
I wish we had a transcript of that subscriber-only twitter chat. There’s some interesting details in the article, but it was an hour long chat, there must be a lot more. Well, maybe not: it’s Twitter and it’s Musk.
So yes, the FTS is teh suxxors apparently, by Musk’s admission. Very surprised (and probably you are?) that the tank venting was the only system available to nuke the vehicle and it was so unsuccessful. I hope they get it right next time. But Musk is saying 6-8 weeks for the next vehicle to be ready. Maybe they just put bigger charges in the same place? Hell, I hope they don’t need the system at all but it damned well should work. 
Also very surprised the “rock tornado” from blowing out the launch pad caused no damage to the vehicle in Musk’s estimation. Really? I mean, maybe the thrust from the engines blew everything down/outward toward other targets like the tank farm. Huh.
Partial transcript on Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/133c59u/michaelsheetz_elon_musk_details_spacexs_current/
Pretty sure there were explosives; they just weren’t enough to fully rupture the tanks. I think they’ll need something longer to unzip the whole thing.
Also, the chat’s been put up on YouTube:
Nice, thanks!!
Still skimming, but much emphasis on “knocking out the heat shields” on the engines. Is that some shroud that protects each engine from other engines? What would take that out?
I’m not 100% sure of what he’s referring to there–each engine has a shroud covering most of the delicate bits, but there’s also an skirt protecting the outer ring of engines. It could be that these were taken out by debris–Musk just says they have no evidence of this yet, not that it’s impossible. But the engines certainly could have failed in other ways, possibly leading to some fuel combusting and blowing the shields off. Or maybe they shook off from the acoustics, or something else…
See the inverted cones here, just above the nozzles? (specifically, above the three engines with the nozzle outlets closest to the center of the image)
I think those are the shields in question, though I’m by no means certain.
Yup, that seems pretty likely, unless they’re making espresso above the engines. Interesting view, thanks.
Wondering how they can tell the shrouds were compromised. Probably a zillion cameras around the engines I guess.
I’m listening to the thing now and it actually refers to the outer shroud I mentioned, and says “you can see this on video, actually”. So yeah, cameras, but ground-based ones in this case .
Listening too, but I hope we get a more formal and detailed (written! With no “ums” ) after action report. I expect more from the leading space company. Maybe from the FAA?
If I find a decent transcript, I’ll post a link. YouTube’s sucks.
I’m not expecting a whole lot from the FAA, except maybe for the FTS issues specifically. Though even then, I’m not sure how much will be public except via FOIA request.
All in all, things sound promising. The crater was a mistake, but also not nearly a problem as it’s been made out to be. They’ll fill in the hole, pour more concrete, and add the giant steel plate system. It’ll have two plates with a gap between them, with holes in the top. And will be pressurized past the engine thrust. The water will regeneratively cool the plate, and also reduce the heating load in the first place when it exits the holes and turns to steam. It’ll be tied to the existing structure, so it won’t be possible for it to lift and separate the way the old system did.
The FTS is the only other big item here, and that is largely about qualification. That takes time but isn’t a significant design problem.
The engine issues should be reduced just by virtue of the next batch being produced later and having less variation. The ones on the last launch were all a little different, probably because they were still tweaking the design.
The TVC issues will be reduced from the next version being electric. Fewer single points of failure.
I’m sure two months is optimistic, but given the rate they’ve been moving since the launch already, it doesn’t seem crazy. They might well be FAA-limited again, especially if it takes a while to approve the FTS changes.
Launch with less than 100% of engines makes sense to me. With 33 of them, having one fail to light up properly or have a telemetry problem would seem to me to be all but inevitable. So to ever be able to get off the ground you need to be willing / able to accept some outages. Heck, part of the justification for larger numbers of smaller engines is exactly that operation with failures is part of any robust complex system.
Bad luck that two of them were adjacent and in the outboard ring; that suggests that control, rather than total thrust was the limiting factor in this case. Perhaps with a luckier distribution of outages they could have launched with even less than 30. I read Musk’s comment about the 30 minimum as implicitly including the context “in the configuration they were”. But those are my words, not his.
I admit I was surprised at the rather long interval from ignition to liftoff. Which duration famously did not do the pad and support structure any favors. Presumably they start them in some managed sequence over a small number of seconds, but it seemed like post-ignition they sat there abusing the pad for at least 3 seconds longer than “necessary”. They had / have their reasons, but I wonder if re-thinking that timeline is in the works.
Or perhaps the nominal plan is to launch more quickly but with 3 engines lagging on start, there is a designed-in pause to let them catch up. Once it was evident they weren’t going to, then it’s just a matter of the go/no-go decision. Which was "go. All totally computer controlled of course; humans aren’t nearly fast enough for these decisions.
As to flight termination timing, I’m a bit confused. He says they lost control at T+85, and the FTS took ~40 seconds to work. That’s ~T+125 = T+2:05. I just rewatched the original live stream of the launch and it blew apart at ~T+4:00. Leaving very roughly 2 minutes unaccounted for in the middle while the vehicle was apparently a) out of control and b) not yet FTS-activated. I’m surprised at quite how long they let it run out of control.
At T+85 they were 865 km/h speed and had just passed 9km altitude. So ~470 knots and ~29000 feet. The good news is they were well above the surface, over the water, and heading farther out to sea. It’s impressive how slowly the coning developed. And how much side-load the structure survived for how long.
I suppose the point is, like much of Musk’s enterprises, the idea isn’t to quit the instant we’re off-nominal, but rather to let the craziness ride until it’s just short of crisis before stopping. You learn more that way.
It will be interesting to see what was behind this decision. And how much it gets second-guessed by the Feds.