#SpaceX Starship Rocket Launch

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SpaceX Starship

SpaceX Starship rocket launches in historic test but explodes mid-flight

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched its Starship rocket for the first time, but fell short of reaching space after suffering a mid-flight failure. No crew were on board.

The company made a first go at getting this launch off the ground on Monday, but a pressure valve in the Super Heavy booster apparently froze. The company’s teams worked to resolve a number of unidentified issues to make a second attempt possible on Thursday.

SpaceX leadership has repeatedly stressed the experimental nature of the launch and said any result that involved Starship getting off the launchpad would be a success.

Starship is designed to carry cargo and people beyond Earth and is critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. Two years ago, SpaceX won a nearly $3 billion contract from NASA to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander. That would see Starship be used for as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program, delivering astronauts to the lunar surface from the agency’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule.

The company had hoped to conduct the first orbital Starship launch as early as summer 2021, but faced delays in development and in winning FAA approval, which came late Friday.

[without-ado]

Starship's Third Flight Test l John Kraus, SpaceX l 14032024

[theofficialastronomy101]

Gotta love explosions! Well here’s a big one! Like over 200ft tall.

[karlrincon]

Starship Super Heavy takes flight! 🚀

The biggest and most powerful rocket ever built, Space X's Starship, launches in Texas before a "rapid unscheduled disassembly" during ascent:

SpaceX 🚀

[skyfire85]

Super Heavy from IFT-4 performing a soft landing in the Gulf, June 6th, 2024. IFT-5 (expected at the end of July) may see the booster land back at the tower, captured by the "chopsticks"

[beveverage]

Hot Staging

Allegedly, Starship's next test flight will see the upper stage engines ignite while the booster is still attached. The plume is meant to escape through slots cut into the interstage.

I prefer the clean, bold look of the first shot, but the alternate one strikes me as a bit more likely...

[adrianl4u]

Static fire of Booster B12, Starship, SpaceX

[cruentaquevivere]

SpaceX’s Starship exploded shortly after launching around 8:30am CDT on 4/20/2023.

SpaceX is allergic to the words “failure” and “explosion”

[spacenutspod]

Welcome to Astronomy Daily! In this episode, host Anna takes you on an exhilarating journey through the latest in space and Astronomy news. Discover SpaceX's groundbreaking plans to land and recover its Starship rocket off the coast of Australia, delve into NASA's fascinating findings from the DART mission on near-Earth asteroids, and get the scoop on the United Launch Alliance's successful mission for the US Space Force. Plus, learn about the upcoming repair mission for NASA's NICER X-ray telescope aboard the International Space Station. Tune in for these stories and more as we explore the cosmos together! For more visit our website at www.astronomydaily.io www.bitesz.com

[the-digital-alchemist]

Behold the towering Starships

A great display of innovation as one is an improvement of the last and pioneering in the world of spaceflight. SpaceX's many teams have been working tirelessly at bringing the dream of an  interplanetary transport system to life, trying different internal structures, testing the models structural integrity and all this done with having the development of a production line in mind.

Join the excitement as we follow their journey bring Starship to life.

[without-ado]

SpaceX's 2nd Starship launch test l WatchLive

l John Kraus l Andrew McCarthy l SpaceX(3/4)

[newdittyswag]

Understanding how Aluminum Shields Your Thoughts: Dive into the Science

Electromagnetic Spectrum and Brainwaves: Imagine a vast spectrum of energy called the electromagnetic spectrum. Radio waves, microwaves, and even visible light all occupy different positions within this spectrum, differentiated by their wavelengths and frequencies. Brainwaves, the electrical signals your brain generates, also fall within this spectrum, albeit at much lower frequencies.Aluminum’s…

[sirfrogsworth]

I found the thing to dunk on Elon for regarding the rocket launch.

A lot of experts in the rocket community were questioning Elon's decision not to create a flame diverter.

For those unaware, huge rockets like this usually have giant trenches underneath to channel the flames, exhaust, and debris safely.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center has a flame trench that is 571 feet long, 58 feet wide, and 42 feet high and is built with concrete and refractory brick and bisects the pad at ground level.

But giant trenches are costly and can make working on the rocket on the launch pad inconvenient. So Elon wanted to try forgoing the flame diverter even though he was launching the largest rocket ever built with the most exhaust ever output.

And now he covered an entire town with a layer of rocket dust.

Exploding the rocket was normal and expected.

Not giving a shit about the town around the launch site... fucking infuriating.

[apas-95]

Did you know that NASA engineers considered the failure rate of some critical shuttle parts to be about 1 in 100 (significantly greater than what NASA upper-management considered the failure rate to be, and what was considered at all acceptable by the certification process)?

Do you know that NASA engineers currently have no idea how many rocket launches the next mission in the Artemis program (in 2 years!) is meant to involve, because the mission plan relies on SpaceX being contracted to deliver a supply of cryogenic fuel to the crewed Orion (™ Lockheed-Martin) capsule in orbit - a procedure that 1: has never been attempted before on any spacecraft, let alone the Orion™ capsule, not even in uncrewed technology demonstration flights; and 2: would require an as-of-yet unknown number of SpaceX 'Starship' launches, because said vehicle does not actually exist at time of writing?

Did you know they're planning on using this 'starship' as the crewed lander? A design for a lunar ascent vehicle, that is, that does not use hypergolic fuel, that relies on a swing-out crane as the only entry and egress point? During the original moon landings, the LEM had so many redundant methods to make sure it got astronauts off the surface of the moon, that in the most absurd, extreme case, where every single mechanism fails, there's a procedure trained into the astronauts to climb around the outside of the capsule, take a pair of bolt-cutters from the equipment box, physically cut the couplings holding the capsule to the lander stage, and take off to get home. Artemis' proposed lander, on the other hand, is planned to be a vehicle whose design didn't even include heatshields until it was realised it would obviously need heatshields, which are ceramic tiles bolted after-the-fact directly through the steel hull, because SpaceX had decided to mass-produce the original-design hull sections all at once for all the 'starships' first, before doing any integrated testing.

We're seeing the exact attitude that led to the shuttle disasters not being prevented now expressing itself in (and even through) the Artemis program, a project pushed harder and faster through the gates than it should be, by a government (and NASA administration thereby) desperate to advance the eponymous Artemis Accords (that goes unsigned by China, Russia, and much of the world) and reneg on all previous space charters that onsidered ownership, commercial exploitation, and military usage of space forbidden. Something bad is going to happen, and it's going to happen for the sake of SpaceX and the military-industrial complex at large.

[adrianl4u]

Starship, the biggest rocket ever made, at sunset

[diretodaamericanews]

"SpaceX lança missão ViaSat-3 Americas! Elon Musk atualiza sobre a missão AX-2!"

A transmissão começou há 16 minutos. A SpaceX tem como objetivo lançar o foguete Falcon Heavy com a missão ViaSat-3 Americas em órbita geoestacionária a partir do Complexo de Lançamento 39A (LC-39A) no Centro Espacial Kennedy da NASA, na Flórida. Também a bordo desta missão estão o primeiro satélite MicroGEO da Astranis e o satélite GS-1 da Gravity Space. Um dos propulsores laterais desta missão…