Starship lost near end of its orbital burn; Superheavy successfully captured by chopsticks
Superheavy captured for the second time
In today’s seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy large rocket, the results were decidedly mixed.
First the success: Superheavy once again performed perfectly, getting Starship up to speed and releasing it for its orbital flight. It then successfully returned to the tower at Boca Chica, where the chopsticks arms caught it. This was the second catch in three attempts. While we should all expect SpaceX to continue to refine Superheavy, right now it appears to be largely ready to go.
Next the failure: Shortly after stage separation Starship fired its own engines and proceeded upward towards orbit. At one point close to when it was suppose to shut off its engines to begin its orbital coast phase, something went wrong. Some engines cut off, but one did not, at least according to data projected on the screen. At that point all telemetry from the ship ended.
After another ten minutes of analysis flight controlers declared the ship lost. What happened remains unclear, but it is certain SpaceX engineers are digging hard to find out.
One unfortunate question remains that must be asked: Where is the ship, and is there a chance it will come down somewhere unexpected? Its orbit is such that it will naturally fall in the Indian Ocean, but the engine issues might have changed that orbit somewhat.
UPDATE: Locals in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean post videos on X (here and here) of Starship breaking up overhead. It appears that if any debris reaches the ground it will land in the Atlantic.
Readers!
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Superheavy captured for the second time
In today’s seventh test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy large rocket, the results were decidedly mixed.
First the success: Superheavy once again performed perfectly, getting Starship up to speed and releasing it for its orbital flight. It then successfully returned to the tower at Boca Chica, where the chopsticks arms caught it. This was the second catch in three attempts. While we should all expect SpaceX to continue to refine Superheavy, right now it appears to be largely ready to go.
Next the failure: Shortly after stage separation Starship fired its own engines and proceeded upward towards orbit. At one point close to when it was suppose to shut off its engines to begin its orbital coast phase, something went wrong. Some engines cut off, but one did not, at least according to data projected on the screen. At that point all telemetry from the ship ended.
After another ten minutes of analysis flight controlers declared the ship lost. What happened remains unclear, but it is certain SpaceX engineers are digging hard to find out.
One unfortunate question remains that must be asked: Where is the ship, and is there a chance it will come down somewhere unexpected? Its orbit is such that it will naturally fall in the Indian Ocean, but the engine issues might have changed that orbit somewhat.
UPDATE: Locals in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean post videos on X (here and here) of Starship breaking up overhead. It appears that if any debris reaches the ground it will land in the Atlantic.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1880031238297354444
Starship?
do any of the pieces endanger people on inhabited islands?
Pictures appearing around Turks and Caicos shows large debris field reentering
All: Refresh my post. I have updated it to include those pictures of Starship debris.
Successive engine failures until it went boom. First engine out around 7:40. 5 out at 8:24 shortly after which it broke up. Video looks like everything went downrange from Turks & Caicos. Bummer. OTOH, looks like they’re close to perfecting recovering Superheavy on a regular basis. Progress.
While I enjoyed BO’s flight. I worry that they haven’t broken enough stuff to learn as yet. Cheers –
I wouldn’t think so.
More concerning was an (alleged) Starship interior photograph shared by @BocasBrain
(“Feeling kinda hot for Flight 7”)
It looked like it had been hit with grapeshot.
I am thinking a Raptor exploded–engines started going out early–so I think Starship faced re-entry heating early–which widened the holes and tore apart the airframe.
No worries.
Just put a NG upper stage atop SuperHeavy, and you have a whole rocket that works as well as SLS on flight one.
Oh, and one more thing Mr. Z…if my scenario is accurate, then this is a potential threat to Lunar Starship as well–even if it needs no TPS.
This is why I love parallel staging–all engines at the bottom–attachment points far from them.
This was not a COMPLETE success, but it was certainly a tremendous success.
Superheavy worked beautifully. Starship, obviously, experienced a significant malfunction.
Given the competency and work history of the SpaceX engineers, I suspect the greatest challenge will be a lack of available information for them to study in order to determine exactly what went wrong.
We all learned about tank sloshing from the first Falcon 1 failures. I saw what looks like some guidance oscillation in the boost phase.
Later, engine telemetry shows Ship’s engine loss order on one side would have created a thrust vector that would drive gimbal correction to its limit and where control would be lost with just one vacume engine firing.
based on this track of commercial jets circling, the debris was east of Turks.
https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1880032865209184354/photo/1
Jeff Wright
Those pictures from inside a Starship were from Starship 29. They may have been IR enhanced.
From the telemetry it does look like serial engine failures, and worse, after 3 died the remaining 3 were all on one side and as speed continued to increase were still vigorously thrusting massively off axis. So I’d bet the ship simply flipped sideways and broke aprt from the stresses.
As regards the initial engine out spreading, as this is the first V2 design really expected to use Raptor 3 which requires much less shielding, perhaps they just rolled the dice that a Raptor 2 RUD was low probability in the meantime so it was not contained as well as it would have been on a V1.
V2 is slated to carry payloads to orbit for profit, so deleting unnecessary mass must be a high priority. Thus I would not be surprised to see Raptor 3s on the next ship.
I must say a SpaceX failure is on one level a beautiful thing.
Not something you want to do too often though.
Boom moment.
https://x.com/futureterra/status/1880033987152019468
Good test launch. Happy to see a major problem so early in the program, will result in a more reliable Ship.
Nothing fails like success.
Elon jumped out a little while ago on X with a first cut of an explanation for what may have gone wrong:
“Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.
“Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.”
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130
Bill Nelson seems unfazed by it, even allowing for the fact that he’s got only 4 more days on the job:
“Congrats to @SpaceX on Starship’s seventh test flight and the second successful booster catch.
“Spaceflight is not easy. It’s anything but routine. That’s why these tests are so important—each one bringing us closer on our path to the Moon and onward to Mars through #Artemis.”
https://x.com/SenBillNelson/status/1880057863135248587
(Elon thanked him for this tweet.)
I think it’s a little premature to raise the Tocsins of Doom just yet.
It’s a RUD, and obviously SpaceX didn’t want that, but if they’re as close to building out the fault tree as Elon seems to suggest tonight, it may not be a significant setback of any kind. Obviously the FAA gets a say, too, but maybe they’ll be feeling in a more efficient mode after January 20.
Don’t forget, this was a V2 Ship.
A lot of new untested hardware.
Let’s hope the incoming FAA people stay hands off.
Thanks Marcus Z for that video.
Probably not– Ellie in Space said there was a number to call if any debris is found
1-866-623-0234
Blue Origin is the big winner this week,and seeing it’s big hydrolox upper stage work means I can breathe a big sigh of relief that the end of SLS is not the end of hydrogen rocketry…with NG and Stoke doing better.
Now–all snark and ribbing aside–I consider SS/SH a national asset.
I think some older MSFC retirees and SpaceX need to work together. The young folks at SpaceX and old hands may learn from one another.
Have Marshall guys sign some secrecy documents and kick the ball around.
I get mildly annoyed when the old “space is hard”, “spaceflight is anything but routine” tropes are rolled out. Humanity has been doing orbital spaceflight for 68 years and Falcon 9 demonstrates the routine nature of operations.
A new rocket is nowadays like a new airplane design. There exists a vast body of knowledge to base the design on. Sometimes you lose one in testing but rarely nowadays.
We went from 1903 to 1935 to 1958, from Wright Flyer to DC-3 to routine Boeing 707 flights across the Atlantic in 55 years and less than 10 years later the A-12 and SR-71 were flying routinely.
I’m sure Bidet’s handlers are drafting a last minute EO for him to sign banning SpaceX forever. Pointless and childish but totally on brand.
SpaceX update:
https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-7
From the text:
“Following stage separation, the Starship upper stage successfully lit all six Raptor engines and performed its ascent burn to space. Prior to the burn’s completion, telemetry was lost with the vehicle after approximately eight and a half minutes of flight. Initial data indicates a fire developed in the aft section of the ship, leading to a rapid unscheduled disassembly.
Starship flew within its designated launch corridor – as all U.S. launches do to safeguard the public both on the ground, on water and in the air. Any surviving pieces of debris would have fallen into the designated hazard area. If you believe you have identified a piece of debris, please do not attempt to handle or retrieve the debris directly. Instead, please contact your local authorities or the SpaceX Debris Hotline at 1-866-623-0234 or at recovery@spacex.com.”
It is quite unfortunate that Starship suffered this failure, but I must say the videos of the debris flying through the air are beautiful and worth watching for that reason alone.
I wondering now how Bob’s launch race standings will be updated.
how Bob’s launch race standings will be updated.
It did LAUNCH successfully.
Do the statistics need to be integers?
Catching the booster could be some “extra credit” toward the ship blowing up.
It was arguably a successful mission: The goal was testing. Stuff was tested.
Now, I’m wondering, too.
BTW: Something is very strange with comments and the Brave browser. The XX Comments counts on the posts do not match the number of comments I see. I never see my own after posting. Switching to Edge, the problems go away.
Mark Sizer: It did NOT launch successfully. The upper stage failed to reach its planned orbit, and broke up over the Atlantic.
If Starship had successfully flown its coast phase and landed in the Indian Ocean as planned, I would count it in my totals. In this case however I will not.
Mark Sizer: It appears the missing comment issue is simply a cache issue. Refresh the page, and all comments reappear.
The NSF YouTube channel did a brutally bad job covering the launch. They had great coverage of the launch. Camera angles, expert commentary, enthusiasm. Then with the ship events, I expected NSF to switch coverage to ship, scan the web for videos, dig into the SpaceX data feed for clues as to what happened and when. None of that from NSF. They spent the next hour of their live broadcast gushing over the catch, replaying the video over and over. I think they had a script that was intended to sell merch and were going to pound away, selling the “catch”, no matter what. It certainly is difficult to find credible and informed sources of breaking news.
Scott Manley has a very good after report: https://youtu.be/vfVm4DTv6lM?si=TkVPmUggvztX8Zwd
Mike, your analogy using how long we’ve been doing rockets compared to that time period with airplanes is nearly useless. It would be better to compare number of distinct rocket designs vs number of airplane designs. Looking at it that way, rocketry development would be at about the same place airplane development was in the middle of World War I.
Part of why Falcon 9 has been so successful is that Elon drove SpaceX into the “the best part is no part” methodology with simplicity of design and engineering as a top level criteria. Falcon 9 is actually a very straightforward and simple legacy rocket design, with the single exception of the booster having the capability of controlling itself after upper stage separation and coming down for a landing.
Starship/Superheavy, on the other hand, are doing a ton of things that haven’t been done before by any rocket, ever.
And Orion, Starliner, and Dragon have all run into problems in spaces that were thought to be in the category of “we’ve done this before, we know how to do this” and then found that no, the old Mercury and Apollo designs barely scratched the surface of a given area and just got lucky that they didn’t run into issues that nobody had a clue about and now we have to investigate, figure out a new problem, and design a new solution. High-Speed/High-Altitude parachute design is one area that wasn’t nearly as resolved as we thought, and so is the area of re-entry shielding materials.
And of course the area that’s giving SpaceX problems right now, and could possibly have been the problem on New Glenn, is everything about taking a high power booster engine, operating it at peak power for launch, and then safely shutting it down while keeping it ready for re-light, plus being able to rapidly re-light an engine, burn it for only a second or two, deep throttling control… nobody has ever done that before, and it IS hard.
Anyone else notice that boostback burn went with 12 / 13 engines lit? One on the outer ring did not light. OTOH, it did light for the landing burn. Would sure like to know which engine was the one they reflew. Cheers –
Great flight, until the end.
Though that landing looks real sketchy to me. the first stage comes it at a hard angle and I feel one day it might not make it coming in sideways like that.
Maybe they can eventually get it to come in more vertically and steady in the future. Though it might take a few seconds more fuel.
It looks like it had another icing problem inside the tanks or a rud for weak material reasons.