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Starship Flight 7

(www.spacex.com)
649 points chinathrow | 7 comments | 16 Jan 25 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source | bottom
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terramex ◴[16 Jan 25 23:04 UTC] No.42732041[source]▶
Looks like second stage broke up over Caribbean, videos of the debris (as seen from ground):

https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662?t=HdHF...

https://x.com/realcamtem/status/1880026604472266800

https://x.com/adavenport354/status/1880026262254809115

Moment of the breakup:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE52_hVSeQz/

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dpifke ◴[17 Jan 25 01:58 UTC] No.42733260[source]▶
Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.

Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130

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coldtea[dead post] ◴[17 Jan 25 05:06 UTC] No.42734284[source]▶
[flagged]
pmontra ◴[17 Jan 25 08:35 UTC] No.42735302[source]▶
Test flights.

My tests keep failing until I fix all of my code, then we deploy to production. If code fails in production than that's a problem.

We could say that rockets are not code. A test run of a Spaceship surely cost much more than a test run of any software on my laptop but tests are still tests. They are very likely to fail and there are things to learn from their failures.

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1. askl ◴[17 Jan 25 13:07 UTC] No.42737132[source]▶
Thank god you're not building rockets.
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2. mr_toad ◴[17 Jan 25 14:32 UTC] No.42737884[source]▶
Testing to failure is pretty common in rocketry. If you don’t push the limits you’ll never really know where the limits are.
3. ls612 ◴[17 Jan 25 15:14 UTC] No.42738351[source]▶
This has been SpaceX’s methodology for a long time now and has gotten them to the point where they have the most reliable western launch vehicles ever launching record amounts of mass to orbit each year at record low prices.
4. inglor_cz ◴[17 Jan 25 15:56 UTC] No.42739096[source]▶
Why precisely? Can you elaborate?
5. ChrisClark ◴[17 Jan 25 16:32 UTC] No.42739822[source]▶
I truly hope that if you ever design a rocket yourself, that you will test it. I have no idea why you'd think testing is a terrible thing to do if it has to do with rockets.
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6. prerok ◴[17 Jan 25 17:17 UTC] No.42740622[source]▶
I think we all agree that you need to test eventually. I do think most of us would already be double checking for leaks. It just seems one of the obvious things that may go wrong when putting it all together.
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7. wat10000 ◴[17 Jan 25 18:02 UTC] No.42741267{3}[source]▶
They likely did test it, and it passed. The leak was probably caused by the somewhat violent environment of the launch, and that can’t be entirely replicated on the ground.