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Starship Flight 7

(www.spacex.com)
649 points chinathrow | 2 comments | 16 Jan 25 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0.41s | 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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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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askl ◴[17 Jan 25 13:07 UTC] No.42737132[source]▶
Thank god you're not building rockets.
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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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1. 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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2. wat10000 ◴[17 Jan 25 18:02 UTC] No.42741267[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.