A better example of “essentially orbital launch:”

https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/nasa-space-launch-system-sls.13729/page-23#post-583211

Starship got about 125 miles up—a burn could help that.

SLS apogee 1,800km
https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXMasterrace/comments/ywmd57/the_sls_vehicle_has_lifted_off/

SLS still has flight-records that have yet to be matched—but don’t expect libertarians to admit to those—or how their zealotry would hurt workers as badly as Green attempts would hurt coal miners.

Fretting bean-counters and carbon-footprint tally’s are both enemies of progress.

Except neither stage was supposed to be reused. They are test articles in a development program. They have been obsolete for months, but they have been used in order to learn what can be learned as fast as it can be learned. The purpose of the flight is to see what new methods and some new hardware and configurations work and what do not, and it looks like they got almost all the testing that they wanted to do, and even tested the diversion-to-gulf method. In that way, the flight was not a failure.

The tower, however, seems to have a problem, or SpaceX has set the “go” criteria too strictly. Either way, development lessons were learned on this flight, which is the purpose of this flight. During development, failures are (counterintuitively) successes, as lessons are learned. Lessons during development reduce the number of failures and the consequences of failures during operations.

As has been noted by SpaceX, they were using an aggressive angle of attack. If they lost the ship (Starship), then what looks like a failure is actually a success. They would have a better handle on how far is too far. As it is, they don’t know where too far is, but they may have an estimate.

“The launches, flights and re-entries went perfect.”

So, there was no failure at all. Right? They maximized their education, and maybe learned something about the tower that they may not have learned if things went right and there had been a catch.

Once SpaceX starts to move into operational flights with reusable flight hardware, then we can see whether they have failures in the operational modes. During those operational flights, they may still be doing quite a bit of testing (as they did with Falcon boosters for a year or so), but a failure would be when a deliverable payload fails to be delivered properly.
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Mike Borgelt wrote: “I did some [see?] something that said the lightning tower on top of the launch tower got bent during launch. I’d bet it also has the antenna for the GNSS RTK differential system on it, so deflecting to top of the tower would put the booster in the wrong spot.”

They may not be so eager to put anything near where a lightning strike is intended to be. I think they would put their antennae in more protected locations. However, it could be that the same thing that caused the lightning tower to be bent (unexpectedly large thrust vectoring or attitude at launch?) could have caused plenty of other damage to the tower. These may be additional lessons learned for the positioning and the protecting of hardware on the tower.

I will qualify this flight as a very successful failure.

I don’t see this as a failure of any sort, and I do not think the Starship team does either. They got three of Elon’s four stated objectives, and a ton of useful data.

I think their original expectations for this campaign were to try to get a catch by Flight 6. They ended up getting it one flight early. That being the case – and given that the reason for the wave-off yesterday appears to have been an issue on the tower, not on the booster – I think the greater urgency at this point was to get the Starship engine relight. That is what will enable full orbital flights, as well as a Starship catch (and, yes, orbital re-fueling). And they got that.

The other thing to think about with regard to the catch wave-off is that in the future, they will surely have ways to still recover the booster. SpaceX will soon have multiple Starship launch towers at both Boca Chica and the Cape, and this will open up backup options if the primary tower has an issue. They just divert the booster over to another tower. That’s an easy software upgrade.

What happened to strong leadership?

Level heads and science will get you nowhere without true strong leadership. If everyone is standing around thinking that they are correct and “I did my job” “I followed the science” “I am an expert” with their thumbs up their nether regions and everyone pointing their free finger at others for their failure of projected desired results and leadership. That is a recipe for chaos and confusion which is exactly what we have had in America and by extension the world have experienced over the last 4 years because of it.

A minister in a government bureaucracy is NOT leadership.

(I was going to stay out of this one, but sometimes I just can’t :)

TRUE LEADERSHIP

“And that statement is an example of exactly what leadership in government is not in America and must never be. There is leadership, there is diplomacy and then there are “experts” in their fields that leadership might consult with before they make a decision and interpretation about the direction that the country will be going. Three very different things.”

https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/the-refounding-and-true-leadership

And yes… I am getting grumpier as I get older… As one ages one realizes that the world is heading to hell in a handcart… I think we are facing several existential threats all at the same time .. and I worry about the world we are leaving for our kids… War, climate change,. Idiocracy… Your fears and my fears are not so different. ( And regarding the “woke” far left… I predicted the pendulum swinging back on here a decade ago)… Non of us know how the world we live in is going to pan out, we can only hope that level heads, and science play a significant role in the hard decisions that are ahead of us.

As for the gulf diversion I was watching the fuel meter the whole time and it looked quite low at the time of the diversion call. Maybe, and this is all guess, they did not think they had enough fuel for a safe catch.

As for the break up of the second stage when it hit the water.
It could be that the fuel tank or piping cracks when it hits warmer water.

Lee S: 1. The reason I have mentioned Beagle 2 almost not at all over the years, including not putting it on my Mars maps, is for the same reason I don’t include the Soviet Mars landers. None produced any usable data on the surface. That’s it.

2. I have been saying for years that I would love to include more Mars Express images, but can’t because the ESA doesn’t make them available. All it does is release one image every few months as part of a press release. The fault thus lies with ESA, not me.

3. My work might be American-focused, but then, I am an American. At the same time, if other nations do something great I gladly report it, such as China’s space program or Europe/India’s incredible shift to capitalism in space. That you conveniently make believe I don’t do this only indicates your own biases.

4. You are getting crankier these days, looking to find fault with others continuously rather than look at things as they are. Very unfortunate and sad, but that’s your problem, not mine.

Wondering if this was intentional, part of the test plan. SpaceX made some comments before launch that the flight profile was more aggressive and they might not be able to recover both stages. Going to be interesting to put together what happened and why. Cheers –

In fact the former “aggressive” is the correct terminology. During the belly-flop maneuver, the hull and fins are essentially horizontal, and perpendicular to the airflow which is vertical. Thus the AOA is as “high” as it can meaningfully get – 90 degrees.

In the Starship belly-flop context, lowering the nose and achieving an AOA of < 90 degrees is aggressive in the sense that it results in more horizontal airflow over the fins, more directional control, and different stresses than experienced before.

The Starship fins however always operate at a much higher AOA than an aircraft wing, in the stall region, and thus in this case move briefly to a slightly "lower" AOA.

Elon has a flair for highlighting the stupidity of government regulation…

The Super Heavy booster successfully lifted off at the start of the launch window, with all 33 Raptor engines powering it and Starship off the pad from Starbase. Following a nominal ascent and stage separation, the booster successfully transitioned to its boostback burn to begin the return to launch site. During this phase, automated health checks of critical hardware on the launch and catch tower triggered an abort of the catch attempt. The booster then executed a pre-planned divert maneuver, performing a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-6

It may have broken up because the structure is not really built to lay down on its side. The stresses from that gravitational direction may have been too much for the structure.

The areas where the tiles had been removed showed signs of extreme heat, and that most likely didn’t help it while it was on its side.

Finally, I’m not sure whether the steel was annealed. It turns out that the metal has to be cooled very slowly for annealing to occur, and reentry happens fairly shortly before the ship tipped onto its side. The temper of the steel may be changed, and if so, that new strength is what SpaceX will have to work with after every ship’s first use. SpaceX will have to use steel that is tempered to the same strength as it will have after the first and every subsequent reentry.

We seem to be seeing progress in the development testing. I have noted that for these tests, the ones that attract a large audience, SpaceX provides quite a bit of test plan information. Years ago, when they had more obscure testing, they gave us little information about the plan, so we didn’t know whether they were testing to destruction or if the test unit burst due to design problems.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1859036912348262787?s=46

Not words normally associated with rockets, but neither are “return to launch site”.

Starship’s success is #Artemis’ success. Together, we will return humanity to the Moon & set our sights on Mars.”

Way to go Artemis!

Came here looking for info on what F posted. Elon hasn’t said anything about why they diverted, usually he posts info quickly to X.

Thermally protecting a moving flight control surface seemed like it was going to be a problem, but it looks like they’re getting that down to. I seem to recall them saying the reentry parameters were adjusted this time around, subjectively it looked like less severe heating to me.

I watched the Spaceflight Now feed…where I heard that 2100 tiles were removed…which might be good or bad.

Starship didn’t seem to explode quite like last time–but it did seem to break up…perhaps from annealing of the metal.

Then too–Starship seemed very responsive in terms of handling…it didn’t seem to wallow as much. Perhaps that is also a result of a lower tile count. The increased mobility may be the big takeaway in all this.

The crew on ISS got some video–and I hope NASA’s big wing Canberra did too.

I remember as a boy when the first orbital launches were made. Times were exciting then. Then things fizzled in the late 20th Century. Now times are exciting again. Oh to be young enough to work for SpaceX but alas I am well into retirement. Space flight is now a spectator sport for me. I hope to live long enough to see the first humans on Mars.

I have the same question as F above. I look forward to the IFT-7. I think it will be a similar flight profile to test Version 2 Starship’s new configuration for reentry. Hopefully IFT-8 will involve full orbital flight.