Haven’t they established that the booster was terminated by the FTS when the last engine went out, an unrecoverable situation? I think the real question is what caused the raptors to flame out. Inertial damage to the downcomer is a popular theory, or some kind of sloshing issue from the hot staging. Could it even be ullage loss from the vehicle being shaken up by hot staging?
As for Starship, I think FTS termination as well is the top candidate. The question is why.
Yeah, I think we have confirmation that the FTS was activated for both stages. We just don’t know why yet. Both stages were showing issues before that point (LOX loss for Starship, Raptor problems for Super Heavy), but the precise cause is unknown.
That’s all we’ve heard. The stages blew themselves up. Why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SpaceX can do better.
Oh, we’ll definitely hear when FAA certification is done. They’ll have to produce a list of problems and mitigations.
I haven’t watched it yet, but Musk delivered a company update with some info:
Regarding IFT-2 specifically:
"So Flight 2 actually almost made it to orbit. In fact, ironically, if it had a payload, it would have made it to orbit, because the reason that it actually didn’t quite make it to orbit was we vented the liquid oxygen, and the liquid oxygen ultimately led to fire and an explosion. Because we wanted to vent the liquid oxygen because we normally wouldn’t have that liquid oxygen if we had a payload.
Some more details in the tweet, and presumably the talk as well.
We did see the vending from the IFT-2 videos, as well as a drop in LOX levels, and I think most of us thought it was a bad sign–apparently that was intentional. But it led to a boom which was not intentional.
In which stage?
Upper stage. I’m watching the video now; maybe it’ll have some details about the first stage, but in any case it performed fine in its primary role.
Not related to Starship, but apparently they’re qualifying Falcon 9 for 40 flights now.
More bits from the presentation:
Lots of other details about other projects, too, and a good annual wrapup. Pretty good summary for anyone interested in SpaceX but not really following every launch or news blurb.
Oh, and hey, we’ve completed another cycle of the title of the thread going from “maybe” to “probably not” to “definitely not” and back to “probably”!
At least the beginning of each cycle is starting at a higher point each time!
I’ll weep with joy if they just get that first one.
Ahh yes, the joys of “this” year. The gift that just keeps ticking! 
Three complete boosters, with a fourth partially assembled:
They need to fly some of these just to get rid of them. No FAA report yet, though that was previously rumored to come out sometime in February, and it’s still early.
This is what Musk calls ‘Hardware rich’ development. For iterative development, it’s the way to go. Try not to let your iterations be slowed down because of hardware construction time.
A flight without any mishaps will presumably speed up receipt of the licence for the following flight. So here’s hoping the next flight goes to plan.
I just wish the FAA had some means of giving tentative flight approval based solely on a safety evaluation. A long evaluation period made sense after the first flight, given the obvious safety/environmental impact and the failure of the flight termination system. And it makes sense for the FAA to perform a full analysis of the second flight at some point. But it should be possible for them to license a new flight without waiting for a full report, since there was no substantive safety concern with the second flight. The approval process just isn’t designed for a rapid iteration rate.
Should I be disturbed that those pix of the SpaceX factory remind me strongly of various scenes in the Star Wars movies where Luke & Darth are battling in some ginormous unimaginably tall space full of shiny stuff?
This is the sci-fi future we were promised, and never got. The last photo especially reminded me of the game Homeworld, with these huge construction bays that capital ships eventually drift out of once complete. The lighting just needs to be a bit more blue:
Are they making changes to the hot staging design, considering the booster kinda blew up?
Not that I’m aware of. The booster failure didn’t seem to directly have anything to do with hot staging (i.e., the rocket exhaust impinging on it). IMO, it’ll basically end up being a software fix. Tweak the throttling of the booster and ship, the way the booster engines relight, the rotation rate, etc.
But we don’t really know anything about why it failed. Internal damage due to water hammer effects seems like the best bet currently, but who knows. If so, then it might warrant some new hardware, like some kind of fluid shock absorber system. But again, maybe just software is sufficient.