Well, RIP that Starship. Does anyone understand/have theories on what failed? All I can find is that it had an RUD between liftoff and first stage separation.
Looks like either it started tumbling before it was intended, or the second stage failed to separate as the booster intentionally flipped for its boostback burn.
With fins up top, the combined Starship and Booster stack is sort of like a dart flying fins-first. In theory controllable with thrust vectoring, but with some inherent instability.
Tank pressure issues is my guess, it was one of the reasons for the hold @t-40
You can see the rocket sliding horizontally early in the flight, then 5 engines out before another few just before the uncontrolled spin, which was likely the result of having too many engines out, being unbalanced, and the controls trying to maintain course.
It looked off to me from the get go, it had more tilt than it should have off the pad and then looked to correct itself slightly, but then only got worse, as you know by now.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 29.1 ms ] threadOlder thread:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35637882
T-86: SpaceX "Fueling of the Super Heavy booster is underway"
T-117: SpaceX "The Starship team is go for prop load; team is keeping an eye on the weather"
T-8h: EM "All systems currently green for launch"
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Note: Can't edit or delete my previous comment anymore, please disregard it. New info will be on this one
Note #2: Seems like this post has been taken off the HN frontpage. Maybe a comment ratio issue?
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Launch in about 1 hours (13:28 UTC), which would be:
- 6:28 Pacific
- 7:28 Mountain
- 8:28 Central
- 9:28 Eastern
- 15:28 European
- Other: https://time.is/1328_20_Apr_2023_in_UTC
Official video stream starts ~45mn beforehand
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- Resources/info:
https://old.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/12n02uf/rspacex_int...
https://twitter.com/SpaceX
https://twitter.com/elonmusk
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-...
- Resources/watch:
Mission control audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBKCePn1E5A
Multistream: https://multistream.co/p/RB8Ao4GidTy/Starship%5C_Flight%5C_T...
LabPadre Multi Plex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2BQKCnPkIc
NASASpaceflight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uouujjgkR3A
With fins up top, the combined Starship and Booster stack is sort of like a dart flying fins-first. In theory controllable with thrust vectoring, but with some inherent instability.
You can see the rocket sliding horizontally early in the flight, then 5 engines out before another few just before the uncontrolled spin, which was likely the result of having too many engines out, being unbalanced, and the controls trying to maintain course.
It looked off to me from the get go, it had more tilt than it should have off the pad and then looked to correct itself slightly, but then only got worse, as you know by now.