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Starship Flight 7

(www.spacex.com)
649 points chinathrow | 1 comments | 16 Jan 25 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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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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api ◴[17 Jan 25 12:28 UTC] No.42736814[source]▶
Would be unpleasant if there was crew. Of course this thing is pretty far from human eating.
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onion2k ◴[17 Jan 25 12:40 UTC] No.42736916[source]▶
Would be unpleasant if there was crew.

19 people have died in the 391 crewed space missions humans have done so far. The risk of dying is very high. Starship is unlikely to change that, although the commoditization of space flight could have reduce the risk simply by making problems easier to spot because there's more flights.

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1. api ◴[17 Jan 25 13:36 UTC] No.42737359{3}[source]▶
I could imagine the risk going down to a few times air travel after 50+ years of operating a mature launch system.