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SpaceX Mars prototype rocket nails landing for the first time, but explodes on pad:
A SpaceX rocket prototype, known as SN10, soared over South Texas during test flight Wednesday before swooping down to a pinpoint landing near its launch site. Approximately three minutes after landing, however, multiple independent video feeds showed the rocket exploding on its landing pad.
SpaceX's SN10, an early prototype of the company's Starship Mars rocket, took off around 5:15 pm CT and climbed about six miles over the coastal landscape, mimicking two previous test flights SpaceX has conducted that ended in an explosive crash. Wednesday marked the first successful landing for a Starship prototype.
"We've had a successful soft touch down on the landing pad," SpaceX engineer John Insprucker said during a livestream of the event. "That's capping a beautiful test flight of Starship 10."
It was unclear what caused the rocket to explode after landing, and the SpaceX livestream cut out before the conflagration.
He added that SpaceX has several other prototypes already in production and the next, SN11, will be ready to roll out for another test flight 'in the near future."
SpaceX's first launch attempt on Wednesday, around 3 pm CT, was aborted at the last tenth of a second. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a tweet that the abort was triggered by pre-set standards around the rocket's thrust, which Musk described as "slightly conservative." He added that the company would increase the rocket's thrust limit, giving the rocket more wiggle room for getting a go-ahead for liftoff. The company then recycled the SN10's fuel ahead of the second, successful attempt.
Also at: c|net and Al Jazeera.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @01:52AM (11 children)
Trial and error,. Rocket goes up, rocket goes BOOM, make a few changes, try again. Even rocket science is now just try, try again.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Friday March 05 2021, @02:25AM (9 children)
the issue here is he's already selling seats for a flight on this corn silo full of tnt for 2023, and people are buying. just like he sold full self driving for 10k, for 2018, for his car you bought in 2016. and the problem is, when he didn't deliver by 2018, and people sold that car in 2020 (still no feature), the future capability they bought didn't transfer to the next owner, and they lost the 10k for the vaporware.
musk us a scammer businessman. he is not a hero, and he is not doing anything groundbreakng. what he is doing is raking in gov subsidies, selling snake oil. he is however effectively using modern tech developed by other companies, and copying existing products well -like the iphone did. which is not a bad thing. it's just not a good nor a hero nit a progress thing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @02:50AM
That's how Musk operates, he's an irresponsible fraud that depends on other people's genius to carry him when he makes claims that can't be substantiated. It amazes me that people haven't just abandoned him to work for somebody that's less of a psycho.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @04:00AM (7 children)
Full and complete autonomous driving is revolutionary technology. Advanced ceased because it turns it simply may not be possible with current era technology.
Human space flight was achieved 53 years ago. Advances ceased only because it was left in the hands of governments.
The two are not comparable.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fakefuck39 on Friday March 05 2021, @05:48AM (6 children)
nasa: launches shit out of the solar system, flies helicopters on mars, goes to neptune and venus. gps, sat radio and tv surround the planet. memory foam keeps my ass soft.
you: no advancement has been made since the 50s.
yes retard, him selling 2018 auto driving in 2016 when it doesn't exist can be compared to him selling 2023 starship tourist flights in 2021.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @07:07AM (5 children)
You really are the most perfect example of Dunning Kruger I've ever seen. And that's saying something on the internets. I specifically said manned spaceflight so your other stuff is a meaningless red herring. But even there it's pretty funny how wrong you are yet how confident you feign being.
53 years ago: That's 1968, not "the 50s"
1959: TRANSIT launched (GPS system)
1961: First probe sent to another planet
1966: First lander on another planet
1967: First lander + return telemetry from another planet
And it gets even better too. Those landings on another planet in 1966 onwards? They were on Venus. I assume even your bitter and insecure little mind is capable of understanding without elaboration the relative difficulty between that and e.g. Mars.
你是假
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Friday March 05 2021, @07:53AM (4 children)
so, i'm guessing 'cell phone' to you means that fridge-sized 2 way radio from tje 60s? the new iphone from that is 'no progress?' the wright brothers plane was a while ago. f35 hasn't improvednon that.
you're the perfect example of purposely dense. first probe to another planet does not equal all the rovers and probes we've sent everywhere. progress: definition: improving on some rough proof if concept. so what we've done with space. you absolute doorknob.
you know all that shit you lisyed? yeah retard, that's what we made the advancements on. just like the new mercedez cars and trucks are an advancement from the 1886 car. you litetally proved yourself wrong. good job.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @09:40AM (3 children)
Ah, so this whole issues comes down to your lack of fluency. The difference you're trying so effortfully to describe above in English can be more simply phrased as evolutionary vs revolutionary change/technology/etc.
Evolutionary technology: sending people to space
Revolutionary technology: creating a fully autonomous and generalized vehicle
Now that we've expanded your vocabulary a bit go back to the first post and reread. There, see, even you can learn too!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @12:55PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @03:08PM (1 child)
Revolutionary change doesn't necessarily entail the creation of a "revolution". It's simply new technology that's not based the evolution of a clear predecessor. Vehicles that genuinely and autonomously drive themselves in arbitrary conditions are something that's never been done before in any way, shape, or form.
And in this case I also don't agree that it won't cause a revolution. The first thing you're going to see after genuine self driving vehicles are created is cities gradually moving to ban self driven vehicles. In one fell swoop you end up solving: pollution, noise, traffic, crashes, etc. You can even get rid of all of the various things like stop lights, etc and replace them with standardized communication between vehicles. Even things like crime become vastly more difficult because you'd have to get away on foot due to the inevitable dystopic level of tracking and surveillance of this crap will have. You'll also be simultaneously destroying one of the final remaining large-scale sources of well paid blue-collar employment which is going to have a far greater impact on labor than e.g. the outsourcing of manufacturing did because it will happen all at once.
Transportation itself will also be revolutionized. It will be economically possible to operate robo-taxis at levels such that taking a taxi could end up being cheaper than owning your own vehicle. The reason there being economy of scale. All of the maintenance/insurance/etc you pay for becomes much cheaper, per unit, for somebody who has a million vehicles in operation. That industry itself will also create what will likely rapidly become the biggest company in the world with, similarly, the richest owners in the world. Big companies will be able to offer faster service for lower prices, so it's going to create a field that naturally trends towards monopolization. Imagine monopolizing any meaningful percent of the 3.2+ trillion miles driven by Americans per year. $0.10 profit per mile = practically free from a consumer perspective, and $320 billion *profit* per year for the company. Contrast that against the $57 billion of net income for e.g. Apple.
The above is why investors in Uber, etc were willing to bleed money. They hoped to transition right into the self driving market with a huge marketshare lead. Of course now it's become increasingly clear that genuine self driving is not coming anytime soon. But such is the case with revolutionary change. Things that seem doable sometimes simply turn out to not be.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by fakefuck39 on Saturday March 06 2021, @04:09AM
self driving is not based on cruise control, lane keeper, autopark, follow a car, and airplane autopilot?
i'm trilingual. for you who's not big on words, that means fluent in 3 languages. tell me, when you say stupid shit, and people call you out, your brain assumes they don't speak english? that's a coping mechnism so you don't have to admit to yourself you're retarded -it makes you live in a fake world to avoid depression.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday March 05 2021, @06:53AM
The fourth castle they build in the swamp will stay up.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday March 05 2021, @01:57AM
But maybe not wholly unexpected [youtu.be].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @02:19AM (6 children)
If you land at 15Knots with some of your legs folded, cocked from an offset thrust vector.... then stuff happens.
As in bounce, verticality challenged, and maybe a bit bent.
If you do that to tanks holding stuff that works like, well rocket fuel, then the interesting question is why was the unscheduled disassembly not more immediate?
Hopefuly, they have achoustic telemetry up thru the disassembly.
Questions:
Why wasn't the touchdown speed nearer zero.
How will the offset thrust result in a vertical touchdown.
What are the dynamic limits for landing these stubs on the pad without exceeding structural limits in the rest of the rocket?
It is amazing that they got far enough to ask questions this far past non-reusable.
No doubt, they will see a landing one could walk away from.
(Score: 2) by slinches on Friday March 05 2021, @02:50AM
Just a guess, but it could be a fire. There were some sustained flames from the engines that were shut down prior to touchdown. If the shut off valves didn't fully close and a fire continued to burn, it would eventually compromise the tanks and cause an explosion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @03:04AM (1 child)
You could walk away from this one, if you were quick about it.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @01:16PM
'You could walk away from this one, if you were quick about it.'
In life you usually crawl, then walk, then run.
Looks like with rocket science it is reversed.
First do a landing you can run from, then walk.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday March 05 2021, @03:07AM (1 child)
My hypothesis: something related to the ground effect [wikipedia.org] but in reverse.
You have a mass of ejected gasses that balances your weight by ejecting momentum. As you are far off the ground, that's about it, no differential pressure considerations.
When you get close to the ground, the ejected gasses establish a flow between you and the ground, flow that will need to follow the ground level. The closer to the ground, the higher the speed of the flow; Bernoulli law would say the higher the speed, the lower the pressure - and you suddenly have a pressure differential between the top (atmospheric pressure) and bottom. To make the matter worse, the flow will be turbulent, so the pressure differential will vary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @08:30PM
That could be or they might not have quite solved their fuel flow issues. If the landing burn started late, the two shut down too fast, or the final burn just couldn't produce enough power then the rocket wouldn't be able to slow down in time with the remaining altitude. However it works those are all problems that they need actual flight data in order to solve, so SN11 is probably going to be a rough landing as well. Hopefully they will have fixed the fuel valves so it doesn't burn (and explode) on the pad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @03:13AM
This Crazy Elon Manuever (stolen from a different site) is still experimental so they don't quite know what it is supposed to look like yet and there is very little margin for error, so they may be starting the landing burn a touch late. On top of that they may be having engine trouble. There was a small fireball inside the skirt when they shut one of the engines down on ascent. (IIRC this happened on SN8 as well.) There was an even bigger one when they shut two off together just before touchdown, and it looks to me like that second fire was still burning after the dust cleared. I'm guessing either back-blast from the shutdown damaged something or one of the engines had a problem right off the pad. One engine's plume was a different colour from the others and I'm wondering if that was a symptom of an engine-rich mixture or a fuel feed problem. To top it off, from what I've heard they don't even have proper landing gear on these yet since they aren't going to reuse them even if they do survive the landing, so even a 'soft' touchdown is going to be a bit rough on things. Still, each one seems to get a little closer to the goal before it explodes, so that's progress.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @02:35AM
That's better than exploding, then having to land-by-wire.
(Score: 2) by Frosty Piss on Friday March 05 2021, @06:21AM (2 children)
Leaky GASket.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 05 2021, @04:19PM (1 child)
Has he ruled out sabotage from a sniper bullet yet?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 06 2021, @01:09AM
https://www.thedrive.com/news/39626/no-elon-musk-is-not-dead [thedrive.com]
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