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Massive explosion rocks SpaceX Texas facility, Starship engine in flames
(interestingengineering.com)
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
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Good lord, everyone please learn a tiny bit about spacex and the state of the space industry instead of letting your (justified) hatred of Elon do the typing.
I dont see whynanyone's surprised, anything Elon is touchung is tainted by association. It's not rocket science.
You're right, Elon Musk being associated with a company is negative. And what SpaceX has accomplished despite that association is truly impressive.
I think around here most people agree that billionaires don't earn their billions, they reach that point having benefited from the efforts of thousands of workers. So why don't we recognize those people's work? Somehow, SpaceX has managed to avoid the meddling that we see from Musk in relation to Twitter and Tesla.
Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia's soyuz to get us to and from the space station. We didn't have anything that could launch people into orbit.
Before SpaceX we were launching single use rockets built by companies like United Launch Alliance (ULA), which was founded as a joint venture between defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing. (They're still around and still for the most part suck)
And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive. NASA didn't and still doesn't really build their own rockets, they contract out, and the contracts had been cost-plus, meaning ULA got an agreed on profit plus expenses. So if the schedule slipped on development or development cost more than expected, they actually make more money. There wasn't much of a private market in space.
With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components, re-established a U.S. sourced crew capsule, and using fixed price contracts they reduced the cost of launch by an order of magnitude. And by publishing fixed prices to get into space, they pretty much by themselves kicked off the private space economy. SpaceX launches more frequently than any other company, and more than any nation.
And they did all that with a better safety record than previous programs! I can't speak to this particular explosion, but SpaceX has taken an approach where they create new designs quickly, and test them quickly with the potential for explosions, before they put humans at risk on a live launch.
Elon Musk didn't do all that, the people at SpaceX did. And if anything I'm concerned about the point when he gets tired of fucking up twitter and tesla and turns his attention to SpaceX. I'm hoping the national security aspect of the company will mean responsible adults prevent him from interfering.
As opposed to now..
Nobody had done that before? Wasn't the promise that they would do few quick checks, refuel, and send it back up same day?
Nasa had do use Soyuz because crew dragon was late. SpaceX won the contract then underdelivered a late product. Basically exactly what ULA or Boeing would have done.
Wanna talk about Artemis?
Meaning no disrespect, it's clear from your response you're not familiar with space history. And that was my point - a lot of people are jumping in here and making negative comments just because of the Musk association without knowing or caring about the reality.
The space shuttle (the U.S.' s previous manned "reusable" vehicle) was retired in 2011, and the Crew Dragon was ready in about 2020. NASA was not forced to use Soyuz because of a delay in the Crew Dragon, it was because the Space Shuttle had two previous fatal disasters, was way more expensive than planned, and would be even more expensive to keep running. I didn't know this until looking at the wikipedia just now, but early safety estimates put the chance of catastrophic failure and death of the crew between 1 in 100 to as low as 1 in 100,000. After those two disasters they re-evaluated and put the risk as high as 1 in 9.
NASA was willing to take a chance on other contracts for commercial vehicles because it had no other options. It awarded contracts both to SpaceX and ULA. The first is doing dozens of uncrewed launches per year and has flown 12 crewed missions. The other is doing like 3 launches per year, has yet to fly Starliner with a crew, and costs more per launch.
The space shuttle vehicle itself was re-usable. The "external tank" was discarded and not re-used. The solid rocket boosters would fall into the ocean, and then would have to be recovered, examined and refurbished. Those tanks/boosters represented a huge portion of the cost. While the space shuttle was slightly more re-usable, other rocket launches would be single use. What SpaceX did that no one else had before was a controlled vertical landing of the booster. In other words, it landed under power and standing up. That's very difficult, and a game changer since it skipped the recovery step, and they didn't require the time and cost of examination / refurbishment the way the space shuttle components did.
What is it you want to say about Artemis?
I like to think that Musks obsession with Twitter saved SpaceX. Thankfully he seems happy to just give them money and do the odd walk around tour during milestones.
They really have turned around our space capabilities.
Man, this is really downplaying the history that was legitimately made by the incredible people at SpaceX. It actually felt to many of us like we had just gone to the Moon for the first time.
Dunno about anyone else but I was freaking out.
🤡
Well, this is rocket science.
Right, and that's the joke. All that talent and progress is tainted by Elon's actions.
Elon founded SpaceX in 2002. He said he wanted to build reusable, cost effective space platform where rocket boosters could land themselves and be refurbished with low turn-around times to fly multiple missions.
People laughed at the idea of a rocket that could land itself upright. And after countless tests that resulted in magnificent fiery failures and flops, a private American company is now responsible for launching crew and cargo to the ISS so we don't have to rely on Russia or ELA alone, and has more recently gone on to develop the largest rocket ever made.
In the 22 years since it's inception, SpaceX has designed it's own:
Say whatever you want about his beliefs, his opinions, his shit takes-- point me to another company that has done even half of that in that amount of time, or had nearly as monumental of an impact on the global space industry and America's access to space in the last two decades.
And if y'all haven't yet already, do yourselves a favor and look up NASASpaceflight on YouTube, watch their most viewed videos, which should be some of the SpaceX tests. You'll come to understand why shit blowing up is normal and a good thing with SpaceX: because they prototype and develop iteratively and rapidly, intentionally testing to failure so they know exactly how far from failure their nominal conditions would be. If they did not do this, the platform would not be safe and they would be getting fucked by a camel wearing another camel's skin for kicks.
Important to point out that a lot of NASA's problems are probably caused by Congress: their attempts to "save money" by re-using designs, the risk of NASA losing funding if any rocket they make fails, their insistence on having NASA support government military contractors, etc
This is a lot of what is preventing them from taking the rapid prototyping and iterative approach of SpaceX.
More like rocket surgery from SpaceX.
I’d have a lot more sympathy for this comment if people would actually do this in reference to Space Billionaires. I’ve had far too many conversations online and elsewhere where the individual shits on NASA for space industry problems and worships Space Billionaires because [some convoluted “government bad rich entrepreneurs good” reason] and their problems aren’t really problems. I’m not saying you’re part of the billionaire sycophant club, but I’m not against musk’s well deserved criticism as he sacrifices people in his rush, and probably work quality suffers alongside them.
Is it ok to shit on NASA for dumping so much money into developing Starship?
Also the SLS doesn't seem much better. But at least they've been around the moon on the SLS.
Personally I'd rather they work on developing spacecraft that can be launch on Falcon 9 or Falcon 9 Heavies, even if it meant multiple launches and assembling things at the ISS before going to the Moon and onwards. Doing this during the Apollo era was difficult because docking operations weren't all that reliable and there was no ISS back then so giant rockets was the way to go. But things have changed and dumping insane amounts of money into building massive rockets seems like a waste of money and probably isn't as safe as using proven rocket systems.
Are you joking? The SLS is a pretty major step backward for American spaceflight. If we continue flying the SLS, and make all the launches we plan (spoiler alert, that isn't going to happen) then the cost per launch could be as low as $2 billion. But more likely we will end the SLS program when it proves to be a never ending money sink, and with so much money put into development, we'll end up with a per launch cost upwards of $5 billion. Meanwhile, for that price it can only manage to get 95 tons to low Earth orbit.
Compare this to the Saturn V, which could lift more and cost much less, even when adjusted for inflation. The Saturn V cost $185 million, or $1.23 billion adjusting for inflation. And it could put 141 tons into low Earth orbit.
To sum up, this new rocket is much less capable and much more expensive than what we were doing 55 years ago.
You could of course also compare this to what spaceX is doing... Their aim is to make a rocket of similar payload capability 100-150t, but with a per launch cost of about $100 million via reusability. That's an order of magnitude of improvement, that's huge.
Then why arent we building Saturn Vs?
That's actually a really good question. The short answer is that we don't remember how to. A lot of the techniques used to actually make the parts were poorly documented. That was partly on purpose, everything was top secret because we didn't want the Russians to know how we were doing it all. And now, all the people who did those jobs have gotten old and left the industry.
Elon Musk promises a lot of things, but doesn't have a good track record on delivering.
SLS has at least been around the moon. I agree that it's a step backwards, but Starship is two steps backwards. Just seems to be a knock-off of the Space Shuttle (which also proved to be a bad idea) that's being developed by just blowing shit up. I hope I'm wrong about Starship, it would be awesome it it worked. But it's the same goes fore the Space Shuttle too.
SpaceX has already blown through $5 billion and hasn't launched anything yet. Well yeah I guess they got it into space briefly... spinning out of control until it burnt up. They haven't even gotten to the part of testing to make see if the heat tiles that we see peeling off the thing will make it go full Columbia on a regular basis. If it ever works it'll be a long time before that thing gets man rated.
Like I say, SLS sucks but it's has a successful launch and has gotten around the Moon. Actually successful not SpaceX "successful".
SpaceX is currently losing the "bad idea space race" to NASA. The only winners in the Space race will be the billionaires that'll make a lot of money from making giant rockets that go nowhere.
SpaceX has a fantastic track record of delivering. So I'm not sure what you're talking about. Just look at the dragon capsule and compare that to Boeing's Starliner. They got funding to the exact same thing and they started work around the same time. So far dragon has done 10 cargo missions and 13 crew missions without any major problems. The Starliner has done 1 test mission in which there were major problems (including a parachute that didn't deploy... yikes), and only recently, years later, 1 crew mission.
Is the SLS a failure? I guess not... but it's not worth the 30 billion we have already put into it for a technological step backward. Calling it a success is like calling the Concord a success, that vehicle flew too.
But the idea that spaceX is losing the space race is just laughable. They're clearly dominating the space race. They put the Russian commercial launch program completely out of business (the Russian space program actually named SpaceX as the reason they gave up). These days SpaceX launches more rockets than the rest of the world combined. Through the savings they see with reusability they can undercut all their competition and still make a great profit. The starship promises to do that to a much greater extent. They're on track to be able to produce these for something in the area of 100 million a piece, and then be able to reuse them up to 100 times. This could bring launch costs down immensely. Can you imagine launching 100 tons to orbit for $10 million? Think of all the things that would suddenly be possible.
SpaceX is essentially two companies. One company uses the Falcon 9 launch system, launches from Cape Canaveral and is very successful. The other company is directed by Elon Musk and launches giant fireworks from Boca Chica.
The Boca Chica SpaceX is burning money and does lame brained shit like not building a proper launch pad just chucking whatever up there. This siphons off money from the Falcon SpaceX which takes away from improving the Falcon 9 launch system, and also siphons off money from NASA.
Given that they're throwing away money at Boca Chica, other competitors will catch up and overtake the Falcon 9.
Kinda like Tesla not improving quality control and doing stupid shit like the Cyber Truck and allowing competitors to catch up in making sensible EVs.
Musk is an idiot but no one can tell him no at his companies. At least SpaceX was smart enough to send him to Boca Chica to play around so he wouldn't screw up the part of the business that actually works.
Well, basically that whole post is simply incorrect.
SpaceX is definitely 1 company the whole company has the same CEO (Gwynne Shotwell) who oversees the whole operation. And for what it's worth, the highly successful falcon 9 definitely was one of those "Lame brained" ideas once. "Landing an orbital class rocket is ****impossible" that was the prevailing wisdom, because it had never been done before. SpaceX is experimenting, figuring out what's actually possible and redesigning a rocket from the ground up. The falcon 9 was the first phase of redesigning, it proved that you can make a rocket cheaper and you can further optimize a staged combustion cycle rocket engine, more than anyone has in the past, and finally it proved that you can land a booster and reuse it. The starship is phase two of that process, (Reusing the whole thing). They've switched from kerosene to methane, a change that will make engines much more reliable for extended use. They've figured out how to make very large rocket bodies out of sheet metal. And they've figured out how to mass produce the first ever reliable full flow staged combustion engines (That's a very big deal)! In short, nothing about Starship is "Lame brained".
The boca chica facility is not taking money away from development of falcon 9, there is no development of falcon 9, it's done, the design set in stone. Ever since they started ferrying astronauts NASA needs them to stick with a set design. They got that design (called block 3) approved for crew use by NASA and from this point on they're only allowed to make very minor changes to the rocket.
I actually agree that Musk has some problems and seriously needs some people who can tell him "no". He needs that in his companies and he needs that at home, I think he's got some addictions he needs to deal with before they ruin him.
Gwynne Shotwell is not the CEO of SpaceX, she's the President and COO. Elon Musk it the CEO and chairman of SpaceX.
Yeah... so Presidents are often figureheads, both in corporations and for countries.
Even the CEO can be a figurehead, because what really matters is who's the majority shareholder. Or do you really think Linda Yaccarino is calling the shots at ~~Twitter~~X?
But anyway Gwynne Shotwell is COO, so that would involve be overseeing operations of the company. Boca Chica is R&D so it wouldn't be a thing the COO would have a big hand in.
But the Falcon 9 operations would be something that you'd expect a COO be heavily involved in. So it's likely Gwynne Shotwell is overseeing operations of that side of things.
You see Elon Musk hanging around Boca Chica sometimes (when he can pry himself away from his insane $44B social media addiction) but doesn't seem all that involved in the boring routine Falcon 9 launches. Which is kinda the point. SpaceX has a reliable launch system with the Falcon 9, but Elon Musk only cares about big new and shiny things. If he was heavily involved with Falcon 9 he'd be wanting to make all kinds of arbitrary changes which would be problematic in keeping the Falcon 9 human rated, and would likely negatively impact it's reliability. So give him a few billion dollars and keep him at his little Boca Chica playground where he can't hurt the core launch business. Well other than taking financial resources away from it of course.
Uh huh, totally not the drug addicted scammers fault that he made bullshit claim after bullshit claim, pushing engineers to make reckless decisions, totally not the owners fault.
I'll grant you that SpaceX has, amongst others, a number of smart engineers, though smart is a relative term if you're working for elon musk
You wouldn't say this if you were following the industry at all. Please see my other comment in this thread. SpaceX is dominating, for good reason, and seemingly in spite of musk.
I've been against the space industry/NASA/etc's bullshit love of Elon's fucked up project ever since the idiot took over. If they can't see how he has mismanaged every single thing he's ever touched and pulled out of every single contract with them because of him, they have serious issues.
Maybe now NASA will come to their senses, kick SpaceX to the curb, and work with someone actually competent.
Like who? Boeing?
Please see my other comment in this same thread. It's not like Tesla or Twitter where they're clearing slipping and releasing bad product. Look at the actual accomplishments!
As much as we on lemmy might look down on consumers of conservative news, I'm really surprised by how similarly reflexive and uninformed a lot of the comments here are.
So that obliterated launchpad is just normal, then? That empty star ship launch that managed to tumble in space was normal? SpaceX alway cheering and laughing when rockets blow up is normal? SpaceX dominates because they receive our tax dollars. Without that, they'd be dead in the water long time ago
One only has to read any current news about how mismanaged SpaceX is and how many problems they are having to recant this "we love Elon and can't imagine not having our dicks all the way up his ass" attitude about SpaceX or anything that incompetent, privileged little shit runs.
Cry harder. Without SpaceX the US space industry would be worse than Russia right now. SpaceX launches hundreds of rockets per year and saves NASA millions in launch costs, and can actually launch people into space, unlike Boeing
Relying on a company so unpredictable and full of problems and errors is worse than not going to space at all. Your unnatural love for that laughable idiot Musk is going to get astronauts killed.
SpaceX makes the most reliable rockets in the world https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/02/spacexs-falcon-9-rocket-has-set-a-record-for-most-consecutive-successes/
https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-successful-commercial-rocket-launcher
Keep talking and making a fool of yourself
Also trying to conflate my defense of a rocket company for some sort of love for an oligarch is beyond stupid. Get some help, you need it.
Relying on arstechnica (full of bullshit) and GWR (sensationalistic bullshit) to prove your claim? How deep in Elon's asshole are you?