Business, Space, Technology and Society

Make Your Flight-Test Predictions

32 Comments

[Late-afternoon update]

Go for Monday. SpaceX has gotten their launch license.

That means I have to get up at an ungodly hour to see the launch (window opens at 0500 PDT).

32 thoughts on “Make Your Flight-Test Predictions”

  1. I’d be happy with a successful booster separation and Starship engine firing.

    I wonder about stage zero damage, though.

  2. According to leonarddavid.com the launch license has been issued. He appears to have the scoop.

  3. Can’t help but wonder how that big complex first stage is going to perform if it starts losing engines. The suborbital flights (all?) had engine issues.
    I know they’ve come a long way in engine development since, but how far? There are 33 now, not just 3. Then six more on stage 2. Reliability needs to be a LOT better than before.

    I would be equally unsurprised to see it fail during stage 1 as if it makes it all the way to splashdown (both stages). As Elon says, excitement guaranteed.

  6. I dare to say that SpaceX folks are the best at what they do.

    They have multiple very successful track records no one else can match.

    So what if it blows up. Failure is an important option. You learn things not to be baked into later iterations.

    I actually learned that somewhere.

    1. My worry is that if it does a RUD too close to the launch pad it will scare the locals/FAA into banning future flights. In that sense it is good that they are just dumping the Superbooster way out in the Gulf without any return attempt.

      1. It’s not kerosene, so there won’t be a gigantic fire (as with the Falcon 9 pad kaboomy). If it pops, the liquid fuels will not gassify instantly and won’t aerosolize, so that will limit the bang. Mostly, it will rain liquid oxygen for a while. I was fairly near a gas pipeline rupture in Virginia that was visible in Chicago. For a couple of seconds, I thought it was a nuke, before it dawned on me what I was seeing (it was nighttime).

        The funniest thing in the run-up to all this was some boob claiming when it exploded on the pad, as he was sure it would, the resulting 6500 kiloton blast would wipe out Brownsville and Matamoros. Talk about innumerate! Of course, a 6.5 kiloton explosion would flatten everything within a thousand yards of the pad, but that kind of fuel-air explosion doesn’t happen by accident, it has to be designed. The contents of SS/SH is 6500 tons of liquid oxygen (non-flammable) and liquid methane (will not burn). But as it evaporates and burns over several minutes, it should make a heck of a fire cloud (a bigger version of what happened with the Centaur a few days ago, which was a flamey hydrogen cloud).

  7. My guess does not rise to the level of prediction. Mostly successful flight until second stage fails reentry.

  8. Launch license issued at 5:50pm ET Friday. As it happens, Monday is a special Federal holiday observed only in DC. Agencies HQ’s in DC are affected by the holiday, which is why Tax Day is next Tuesday. IRS is shut. I don’t think Sierra Club can get a Federal injunction before than. FAA is immune to state courts.

  9. As to what might happen, I will note that large LVs have historically been immune to the curse of first flight. Of rockets in this general class, Saturn V, Shuttle, and SLS flew on the first try. Only N1 failed, and then it was on all of its launches (because of lack of ground test facilities, not number of engines as so many idiots claim). All three of the US vehicles flew all-up on their first launch. In the next category down, Falcon Heavy has yet to fail.

    If I had to guess (based on what I know, which is more than most), if it gets through MaxQ (which I think it will), the next most fraught phase will be the entry component of EDL. Starship can survive fairly significant tile loss due to stainless still structure (as opposed to STS aluminum). It’s somewhat resistant to burn through. Loss of control is a bigger danger, either though electrical failure, or loss of an aero surface. If the former, it has some inherent stability, but would need luck. If the latter, it will tumble and disintegrate (as with Columbia).

    There’s lots can go wrong, most having little to do with the physics of flight. Latch failure worries me most.

    1. I forgot about Energiya. It arguably worked on both of its flights, since what failed on flt1 was the payload’s guidance system. It will be one up on SLS until Artemis II. Wonder how many times Starship will have flown by Nov. 2024?

    2. I suspect that is why there is no plan to fire its engines on re-entry and to just drop Starship into the Pacific. I assume there will be aircraft in that area imaging it as it re-enters. Does anyone know if NASA deployed one of the RB-57s to Hawaii to record re-entry?

  11. My uneducated guesses;

    There will be delays. They are common on 1st launches.

    There will be damage to the launch complex. This will be true even if it’s a nominal launch, due to the rather unique and untested design of the launch mount. My guess is that the flame deflector, and some of the GSE plumbing, will need a bit of beefing up.

    I think the booster will not fully execute the landing burn at sea with anywhere near the needed accuracy for a landing back at the launch mount (the accuracy needed for their “chopsticks grabber” is far more than anyone has ever done before). IMHO, it’ll take several tries to develop the accuracy needed.

    As for Starship’s TPS, I expect some issues, though not catastrophic ones. Same as for the first Shuttle flight.

    Even if the issues I speculate on above occur, I think Elon will (quite rightly) declare success.

    As for a true failure scenario, if that occurs, I think it will be at stage separation. Last I heard, their stage sep plans were to spin the entire stack end over end, and use that force for separation. That’s very much an untested scenario, and it’ll impart spin to both the booster and starship on separation, so IMHO the first time trying it is high risk.

    1. And I forgot to mention, I’ll be surprised if there isn’t an engine failure of some sort.

      1. It would take a lot of major engine failure to affect this flight. On the test light, one engine never lit and another one had a flameout. Operational, with a full payload (now 200 metric tons!), a no-light or prerelease flameout would cause an abort. But for a no-recovery test flight with no payload, it’d have to be five or six engines right next to each other to cause a real problem (like flipping over and flying into the swamp). My guess is, if 30 engines or so are running at T-0, the hold down clamps will release. If more engines start going out at T+1, it’ll stagger away from the pad and trigger FTS. Followed by kaboomy goodness.

    2. I doubt there will be damage to the “launch complex.” People forget the tower isn’t just steel beams, they were erected, then pumped full of concrete. The launch mount legs were too, but I was surprised they didn’t set up a water cooled flame deflector. Maybe they’re already planning on a major redesign and this is a handy way of getting rid of the old one? Anyway, the brought the old flame deflector from KSC for a reason.

    3. Btw, the stack is not going to “spin” or flip end over end. The thrusters will initiate a pitch down maneuver (standard for all LVs at various points in a flight). When the interstage latches are released, the stages will pull apart and the pitch maneuver will stop due to very basic (6th grade level) physics. If you’re spinning a bucket of water around and you let it go it doesn’t tumble, it flies away in a straight line (with the water inside in zero gee for a few seconds). I don’t know if little kids are allowed to spin buckets of water around these days. In my day, of course, we had pumped water rockets, which we used as weapons of mass destruction.

  12. ??It will burn down, flip over, and sink into the swamp??

    Hopefully it flies perfectly – break a leg!

  13. That means I have to get up at an ungodly hour to see the launch (window opens at 0500 PDT
    Should’ve kept that place you had in Florida! lol.

  14. My favorite “Aieee!” launch was Energiya #1, where it literally staggered off the pad, swaying back and forth. Then it flew fine and dropped it’s passenger off in the upper Stratosphere, to screw up completely, due to a classic programming error.

  15. There is a worst-case scenario: the beastie lifts off under full power and crashes into the tower, ripping open and dumping it’s fuel to cascade down to the hot exhaust. I don’t *think* it would knock the tower over, but it might. Regardless, the resulting deflagration would make a truly outstanding mess. This sort of thing has been a known concern for super-heavies, including Saturn V. I thought that was going to happen to Energiya #1.

  16. “Solid rockets are a branch of fireworks.”

    His first name was Henry. I’ll try to remember the second.

  17. I’m going to have to stay awake past 9pm here in the Socialist People’s Democratic Oppressive Thugocracy of Australia.

    1. 3 hrs later here in ‘we can do socialism better and faster than Australia’ New Zealand.
      That’s IF it goes at the opening of the window.

    2. The U.S. shares no border wall with Australia.

      Half of us do set other standards for admission and assimilation.

      You might actually pass.

      You’d have to renounce the Royals.

  18. I’d like to hang out in Australia, but how many bar fights would I have to suffer if I could care less if God saved the Queen/King?

    }8^D

Comments are closed.