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Starship Flight 7

(www.spacex.com)
678 points chinathrow | 1 comments | 16 Jan 25 21:25 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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BurningFrog ◴[17 Jan 25 15:15 UTC] No.42738368[source]▶
Modern space ships are very likely to change that, as designs mature and improve.

Early aviation was extremely dangerous. Now a plane is among the safest places to be.

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mark-r ◴[18 Jan 25 14:24 UTC] No.42748546[source]▶
Planes are safe because investigators were diligent about going to every crash and investigating to find the root cause. That's a lot more difficult when your evidence is dispersed to the stars or burns up on re-entry.
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1. BurningFrog ◴[18 Jan 25 19:00 UTC] No.42750519{3}[source]▶
Modern space ships are full of sensors measuring everything interesting.

That data is streamed to Earth, so you usually have pretty good indication of what happened, even if your ship is now a puff of stratospheric smoke .