Hi Scott! European Space Engineer here! As part of the French space law we have the requirement to fragment any rocket stage falling back to earth if there is still any (solid or liquid) propellant in them. The goals are 2: (1) to avoid any propellant detonation during impact on ground, and (2) smaller debris have smaller kinetic energy hence are less dangerous. Regarding the risk of collision with aircrafts, the flight safety corridor is determined considering many many degraded scenarios. Also, the neutralisation is performed as low as possible to avoid spreading debris over a large area. EDIT: (3) neutralising also allows to ensure that all propulsion is stopped (in case you still have a doubt), thus ensuring that rest of the flight is ballistic. If there is some propulsion left, the stage could deviate a bit still and the final debris could be even further from the flight path, increasing the risk of falling on some aircraft. With a ballistic trajectory, it’s easier to identify where debris will fall and which aircraft to divert (I.e. the one in vicinity of the flight path).
sure they have smaller kinetic energies but starship was projected to impact the ocean, it doesn't matter how large the kinetic energy is if it is impacting a body of water...
Thats great insite! In this case would it have been better to reenter the atmosphere first then make it go bang? Assuming communication hadn't been lost after telemetry was cut to the stream?
@@benkai09 That's the problem. If you lose telemetry you've probably also lost the ability to send commands from the ground. Provisions to activate or not activate the self destruct (or flight termination system if you prefer) have to be coded in advance anticipating a loss of comms.
Regarding (1), for an ocean impact fire risk is minimal as water is a great heatsink, plus SpaceX hardware burns methane+LOX, so there's minimal toxicity risk to the environment from the fuel (as opposed to something like a UDMH+N2O4 booster): LOX and Methane are both fairly nontoxic, both will tend to disperse into the atmosphere as they aren't liquid at ambient temperature (so what toxicity methane does have won't poison many fish), and on the off chance they do burn on impact, they'll go to H2O + CO2, which are pretty much harmless. As to (2), once you're past the apex of your trajectory, "as low as possible" becomes "as late as possible", which means that if your propellant is nontoxic and the impact point is over water, you really do have to consider the possibility that holding fire on range safety entirely is the best course of action.
@@rosaliebent4833reentry is a technical term describing the atmospheric entry of an object returning from space. It does not have any implications on the success of the maneuver. Columbia broke up during reentry. MIR was destroyed during reentry.
No fluff just straight to the point explaining the whole launch which i sadly missed watching live. Scott is by far the best space commentator on the platform.
Welcome to my reply where I'm going to use as many words as I can to drag out the view time but first a look at our metrics and a word for our sponsors... Thank you for getting in, giving real information, and flying safe.
I basically said exactly the same thing. The....... I called it narration incorrectly of course because I forgot the word commentary 😅😂 was fantastic i thought. He should have a full-time job doing this.
It's sort of always been a spacex policy to fly it in to the pad at the "last second" so to speak. Falcon 9 does the same anyways. I think the idea is if something fails right before landing they can steer it away from the tower/pad.
It's not a euphemism for that though, the explosion is a separate event from the "pressure in excess of vent capacity". The story here is that the pressure build-up led to a fire, the fire led to a loss of control. The loss of control led to a deviation from the intended flight path/profile, which eventually led to an explosion - either from aerodynamic forces or from the FTS. I guess technically explosions _are_ fires, albeit very fast ones. From that perspective it seems there were two fires - first a slow one caused (or allowed) by the pressure build-up, and later a fast one caused by something else.
8:59 The difference in apparent speed between fragments closer to us vs further away from us gives this a really nice 3-dimensional feel that you normally don't get from 2D images on a screen.
If you saw the video from the cockpit of an airplane, there was a really strong parallax there too. Without a background reference other than the cockpit window it’s hard to judge this, but I’d guess the closest pieces looked to have an angular velocity 3x that of the furthest. That’s pretty scary to me because it would mean the spread of the debris is a lot wider than the actual distance to it. In other words, way too close for comfort. 😬
@@JZsBFF Yeah, the usual "Didn't go too well for them" if similar things happen to chinese vehicles has to be reevaluated. But hey, it's just Tax-Dollars or Tax-Yuan anyway.
Hopefully the boom was the FTS. That makes the failure much simpler. Fuel leak, propulsion failure, trajectory outside of mission parameters, FTS activates. A LOT less worrisome than "it randomly exploded and we don't know why"
@@thulyblu5486Yet again why there needs to be an ejection system. Manual FTS and a bailout option for crew. Of course once in space that stuff can be disabled.
@@thulyblu5486 I'd presume there will be. If you lose control of the thing when it's coming down, FTS would be safer than try to guess where it'll crash. Crew may be fewer losses than spaceship crashing into an apartment block middle of a random city somewhere.
The cameras shots both from and of the booster of this flight are some the best I’ve ever seen, you can see the atmosphere get denser clearly as it descends.
This is probably the single aspect where SpaceX makes consistent progress. Video feed was non-existent at first, then very spotty and limited during their first few successful returns, but improved greatly overtime.
I noticed that but had the thought, if it didn't relight on the descent burn, should we risk it blowing up with a second relight attempt. Would be interesting to know what happened there. I wondered if it could be the re-used engine, apparently it was not.
@@paulwilson8367 The reused engine was on the outer most ring, from pictures. I wondered if it was a propellant feed problem for that one engine. I wonder if they even would have had the time or capability to have a human make the call to try and use that engine on landing... I would be unsurprised if the computer just adapted to the engine not lighting and just didn't have any reasons to not try it again.
This is a secret, so don't tell anyone, but SpaceX has an unpaid intern ride long with the first stage booster so that if an engine won't start he can give it a swift kick or two.
I absolutely LOVE that we live in a time that a huge portion of the population have high resolution, high quality cameras in their pockets at all times and can capture stuff like this in an instant. If this happened 25 years ago, nobody would have video of this.
"I'm sorry that you had to watch all that vertical video, but its what the Kids seem to like these days" Scott speaking the truth, this is an abomination that we should fight ;-)
The bad part is that some phone cameras film wide in vertical and then go upright when turned sideways. Still not use to it on my phone, and it's apparently not a setting that can be changed.
Scott, this is your sweet spot! These detailed, thorough, and clear breakdowns of events are just excellent. Thank you! It's almost worth having a mishap just to hear your analysis of it. We have our very own one-person NTSB.
NTSB is a stretch - Scott's obviously not in a position to inspect debris or raw flight data. His vids can't be as detailed as an NTSB accident report would be. But it's definitely fun to have an armchair sleuth who knows what to look for on a preliminary basis!
But these graphics were confusing. Numerous times he flew through them without some visual cursor or drawn circles directing your attention to the item he speaks of. The hot zone and flight diversion graphic was useless. Normally he does better, and other channels spend the time to do so profitably. I think he rushed this one out while the topic is trending.
That shot following 4:42 just goes so hard. All those shockwaves, the compression heating between the nozzles, the clouds shifting between states as the ship passes. Thats like one of those that CG artists will use as reference material going forward.
@@HuntingTarg it is backwards because the forward relationship of "Art imitates life" is too obvious, so obvious in fact we had been doing it since 40,000 B.C. when the first cavemen decided to put their handprints on a wall as a record of their existence. But as our technology progressed we began to be able to change the world around us to match our vision instead of the other way around, and it is then, "Life imitates art" became a reality as we not only made records of the past, but visions for the future.
What FANTASTIC narration mate. You should have a full-time job doing this. I've watched loads of these videos narrated by other people, and they just don't come close. Keep up the great work. I will of course be SUBSCRIBING
Scott Manley is the space guy for me as well. Especially his question from the viewer series where you can see his knowledge in real time spitting facts.
But these graphics were confusing. Numerous times he flew through them without some visual cursor or drawn circles directing your attention to the item he speaks of. The hot zone and flight diversion graphic was useless. Normally he does better, and other channels spend that time profitably. I think he rushed this one out while the topic is trending.
Musk and Bezos said earlier in a joint news conference, "Put together our missions were perfect today" Too bad this didn't actually happen, except that starship's booster took off and landed while new glenn's didn't, and new glenn's second stage went to orbit while starship's didn't. A memorable day in the history of space flight.
love the way the booster sat there very gently swinging, after burning off all that energy the only energy left was for a gentle graceful swing. amazing
That got me thinking that they're going to eventually have to figure out a way to quickly arrest that motion. If it's a windy day, the motion won't necessarily stop on its own, and Booster is going to need to be perfectly vertical for the trip back down to stage 0.
14:13 You definitely don’t want that, because without a flight termination, the uncontrolled control surfaces could push it off-course, while it’s unlikely for the spacecraft to maintain structural integrity before it turns into god’s greatest shotgun. So they traded off a smaller affected area for a more predictable affected area.
It might not be uncontrollable, though --- if there's enough battery and structural integrity to use the flaps to steer the vehicle down through reentry, then that's a plausible reason to _not_ trigger the FTS even if it leaves its designated corridor. It would be complicated to do, as it would all have to happen autonomously; the onboard software would need to try and assess how badly things are going wrong, select a safe target and aim for it, and having worked with computers for years I'm not sure I'd trust one to do that right!
This was not an RSO-directed flight termination. This was a complete loss of control that caused serious danger to civilian aircraft. Quit riding elmo rod.
@@TwoTreesStudio Danger to people on the ground, as well. The fact the FAA approved this flight corridor in the first place tells me that they were already completely bought off by SpaceX and all of their useless handslaps were just a show for those few gullible rubes who still believe there's any good left in the world.
Wouldn't a nice compact range safety nuke pretty much annihilate everything? No messy debris hurtling earthward. Sure, crew & pax in nearby aircraft might need those B-52-like reflective curtains or possibly welding goggles, and we might lose some lights and electronics from the pulse, but it would make a glorious display, and remind Canada, Greenland and Panama who is really in charge 🙂
Honestly, the debris was so beautiful on reentry in an aesthetic sense at least, a rainbow of metalic plasmas. Will be interesting to see future failure analysis.
Thanks captain obvious. We saw the same vid and heard the same things. Do you have any original thoughts or observations that weren't mentioned or just the same one that echoed through the vid?
I love Scott's presentation, he's been doing it for years too, if you ever want to look up some of his older breakdowns of launches, they're full of great technical analysis.
It's pretty amazing that we can see some type of flammable gas venting out of the starboard aft hinge opening and then cascading engine failures that followed. The "vent event" theory is definitely plausible. Great summary once again Scott! Cheers
Columbia's destruction actually shook my house for several minutes. I had no idea what it was (I didn't go outside, I expected it to be something on the ground I wouldn't see) ... only found out when I went to Home Depot 30 minutes or so later and people were talking about it. I found out much later that at least one piece splashed down in the lake just a few miles away. ... also I was at school in the school library watching the launch with the class and even on a call with a guy at NASA when Challenger exploded. I still remember something like "hold on a second, something's going on", my friend saying "maybe the shuttle blew up", then EVERYONE staring at him like he caused it when we saw it on the TV.
I guess shuttle launches were still special at the time... at least enough for a class to have a watch party and have a NASA guy on the phone talking about space history.
It's sad that they didn't get to test so many things. They couldn't test the Pez dispenser, the catch hardware in re-entry, and the actively-cooled tiles to name a few.
@@amentco8445 I think he mention about the catch hardware in the starship not about the tower, like gimbling the engine to land softly on the calculated spot, same like flight 6. this time more accurate
This thing was evidently a sloppy job; the next iteration will likely be better integrated, and knowing SpaceX will also have some additional new tech.
Honestly, I don't remember Columbia as being anywhere near as colorful. My dad and I were trying to watch reentry that morning, because it wasn't often that it would pass that close to us. It was far enough north of us that it wasn't super distinct, but it was mostly all white-yellow sparks. Still get chills remembering that moment. At least with Starship destructive tests, there hasn't been that sort of loss of life. "Go fast and break stuff" engineering only works when lives aren't on the line.
That's the reason failure like this are so important early on the development. You don't want that to happen with Astronauts onboard. Test flights without failure are not ideal anyway, you want the maximum number of different failures when doing a test flight.
Reusability is the key to economical space access. I don't care about people going up, per se. I want massive payloads that can carry robots and 3D printers, to establish space industry. (Yes, it will need to be safe enough to carry some skilled human operators, but I'm fine with the "oil platform" business model, as opposed to the "jet travel" model.)
I think the methane leak was lot bigger than Elon tries to put it. If you see how fast the tank empties, this must have been a catastrophic damage to some large fuel line. Which is in itself not a bad news, perhaps just a pipe went loose or something, meaning, fixing it will be easy.
He indicates that it was a pretty big leak - big enough to overwhelm vent capacity, which is pretty large. All the message says, at this early stage, is they saw high pressure in the ceiling area, which indicates a big leak. His message showed that they didn't yet know whether the leak was oxygen or methane. Pretty clear it is methane, based on the tank level graph on the webcast.
The sequence of the engines shutting down if the display can be trusted for that, could also give some clues to what happened. Since some of the engines still worked and it is known that there is one large pipe from fuel tanks to engine area, that component likely didn’t fail. They probably have some kind of hardware off from the main pipe that feeds into the turbos of engines, and some engines were still getting fuel when the leak begins. I would guess that one or more engines pump connected hardware failed catastrophically.
@@notanytimenowAs long as tank rupture can be ruled out (and I think it safely can, the flight engineers should have enough data to determine that), it's more 'analyze, iterate, move forward' with launch 8.
@@robertbackhaus8911 The most likely scenario with the fuel graph is that a smaller leak starting a fire in the space caused damage to parts of engines and one or more of the failed engines sprung a leak, resulting in the large methane loss. Probably a methane feed line or feed line flange failure.
@@duviworthing SpaceX didn't attempt a catch on the first four flights anyways There was no catch attempt for Flight 6 as the catch tower failed automated health checks, so it (the booster) instead made a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. So far, there have only been 2 attempts at a booster catch, and both were successful
I'd love to see this thing in person. First, the size is hard for me to comprehend. Second, the booster landing looks so impossible it seems almost like CGI 😮
Yeah, that booster is huge! There is a clip of a man walking under and then the camera zooms out to get the booster inside the frame and the man is hard to see. This is the 2nd succesfull booster landing on the "chopsticks". Amazing, definitely.
Such a bitter sweet launch! The excitement of the second successful catch of a sky scraper, followed by the heartbreak of a dramatic RUD. Total roller coaster.
Elmo simps are thanking their lucky stars that they haven't killed anyone yet. And it does come down to pure luck. They'll be lucky if the FAA lets them fly again this year.
Highly unlikely comment...FAA allows for exactly this type of situation within a certain margin...afterall the license is for a prototype development, the chance of catastrophic results is never off the table...only question is whether it crossed outside of the allowance they were given(Which is highly unlikely as the ship was on course when it exploded, meaning any debris would still fall within the designated splash zone)
@@ericpaul4575That depends on the AoA you're viewing from. It also depends on whether a particular uploader is thinking about the framing of the shot, about making a short that their subs will watch, or just wants to hold their phone more comfortably...
I don't get the continued hate on this anymore. Most people view videos on phones now which are naturally vertical, and if on a PC the screen is big enough to still show enough detail.
The FTS serves 2 purposes 1. Quickly remove any remaining fuel from the rocket which would add to the vehicle’s kinetic energy and support a big boom on impact 2. Increase the aerodynamic drag to further reduce the kinetic energy of the system The result is a significantly less energetic impact with the earth
@@josephastier7421yeah this one is significant. If it was just about reducing impact energy, they'd be better off not doing it since there is only ocean east of Turks and Caicos. But they wanted to make sure that a floundering intact starship wouldn't end up steering outside of the hazard zone and likely exploding anyway. This way all they had to say to pilots was "stay/get out of the predefined hazard zone in a minute or two" rather than GET AS FAR AS YOU CAN FROM FROM THESE SPECIFIC COORDINATES WITHIN 8.5 SECONDS
@ that’s to be expected. Heatshield tiles are incredibly lightweight since they’re full of voids to limit heat transfer. That also means they aren’t much of a hazard. It’s like a falling sponge
Not often I disagree with you Scott, the exclusion zone that came into effect once Starship exploded did its job - and prevented aircraft flying through the debris field - and the initiation of the FTS kept the debris within that designated zone. Disagree with you that FTS could have been delayed - as without controlled flight Starship could have gone outside this zone - it's a lifting body after all - not a ballistic projectile.
Several aircraft declared fuel emergencies (maydays) and had to land inside the debris area because their destinations and alternates were both on the other side of the zone. San Juan exceeded ramp capacity but still had to accept fuel emergencies. The exclusion zone did not do its job. Pilots and dispatchers had no idea there was even a launch in the area of their flights. This was a dangerous situation for many flights. I'm with Blancolirio on this - SpaceX's philosophy of constantly pushing their designs to the limit and accepting the inevitable massive explosions they're gonna get is not a responsible use of our airspace. The FAA was right to shut them down.
@@beenaplumber8379 Wow - it seems like the FAA's procedures for managing exclusion zones need revising. That there were air traffic controllers unaware of the potential exclusion zones, and that this information had not been relayed to aircraft operators and pilots is shocking. Not SpaceX's problem though.
@ No, that's not what I said, and that's not at all what happened. Once the explosion happened and the debris started raining down, controllers were made aware, and they routed aircraft away from the zone. It was dispatchers and pilots who were not made aware in advance that this might be a problem, so they did not designate alternates on both sides of the Starship's flight path. Effective flight planning was made impossible. The exclusion zone (it has a proper name, but I can't remember it) was put up, and pilots were directed away from it, but where were they supposed to go? They had no planning in place to deal with being stuck on one side of the zone when their destinations and alternates were on the other side. San Juan was the obvious place for many flights to divert (which is no small thing to do), but they had their own problems with a runway closure or something... abnormal ops that made them less able to accommodate the additional traffic. So instead of flying into debris and crashing, aircraft were running perilously low on fuel and flying into the zone anyway to avoid crashing from fuel starvation, landing at an airport that could not effectively accommodate them. Yeah, the FAA could have done more, but the cavalier attitude of SpaceX about sending spacecraft up to explode over crowded airspace could have gotten a lot of people killed. This was inevitable and irresponsible.
@@beenaplumber8379Yes - and I agree with you that the procedures need revising to ensure that everyone engaged with managing or using the airspace within the potential exclusion zone are aware in advance and can make appropriate plans. Not SpaceX's issue though - unless SpaceX did not follow FAA guidelines?
Thank you for always providing interesting and unbiased information regarding rocket launches and failures, it's why you are my main go to channel for updates.
I love that we can always count on Scott Manley to make an after action report, when something goes wrong in space flight - thank you. Hopefully the issue is minor and we get flight 8 soon, for flight 7 we at least got a very expensive firework and booster catch.
@@boringusername792 This should definitely require a mishap investigation and conversations must be had about having larger exclusion zones as a contingency.
What a time to be alive and have access to such epic public and engineering footage! Not to mention the insanity of catching a skyscraper with basically chopsticks.
Scott, Can you please make a video detailing all the saftey precautions the FAA and launch providers make prior to launching. I'm a afraid that the general public will see events like this and start to think rocket parts are going to start raining from the sky and hitting them in the face. I think its important that the general public understand all the effort that goes into keeping the public safe during launches.
@@JakeLeyman-q6d Is he though? Can you demonstrate even a single use of the 1st person plural in the video that unambiguously refers to SpaceX, and could not be instead refering to the whole community of space nerds?
I think boost back was a bit shorter than flight 5 even with one engine missing, and it happens a few Kilometer lower, meaning top speed in the atmosphere was around 300km/h less than flight 5 thus less heating I would assume Edit: I totally forgot that V2 is heavier
Definitely not a success but failures like are so important in this early development. Too bad, the landing catch was overshadowed by the upper stage rud.
@@markeh1971how many Saturn V exploded to get to the Moon? And it's 7th starship and he can't even get to the orbit with all the modern technology they couldn't even imagine in Apollo era.
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX had partially successful test launches. The world of space is getting definitely more exciting. Best wishes to both companies.
Everything about space and spaceflight is Beautiful and terrifying at the same time. i never though starship could be an amazing big budget aerial firworks show.
Good to see them catch the booster again. Still gives me chills. Never in my life would I of thought commercial/privatized space flight would even be possible to this degree.
@@ThatOpalGuy And Elon spending his money is that what u saying - Elon took 3 BILLION from Gov for "space" program - educate your self dont talk stupid things .
Well between Starship and New Glenn we have 1 payload successfully delivered to orbit and 1 booster successfully landed. So if we combine the two into Star-Glenn we have a 100% successfully launch!
I am really impressed with how much often SpaceX launch again but i am really not impressed with how many failures ,how many fails had Saturn V rocket ,before any off simulation software there is now
@expioreris Eh, kind of. We will pay 2.89 billion for Starship no matter how much money SpaceX uses to test it. Them blowing up a rocket doesn't cost any more to us.
The transition between the "move fast and break stuff " mindset to the "slow, steady and safe" that is the standard in commercial aeronautics is going to be interesting to watch. I wonder how many toys will exit the pram in the process 😉
Yeah, it's going to be an interesting thing to watch. "Move fast and break stuff" is, at the very least, great for highly visible testing processes. You can see the work being done, it's very exciting, but that is _not_ how actually-operational aviation works, especially when there are customers involved. Caution and reliability are the aim of the game there.
They kind of did it with Block 5 of Falcon 9 in order to fly crew. It's only had minor adjustments since then and usually only debuted with low-risk payloads. Starship will likely be similar. Once it's more mature then design will be finalised, flown many times and only received minor adjustments which will be tested on cargo first.
Yeah look at Blue Origin, took its time but successfully made orbit on its first attempt, something Starship hasn't achieved after 13 Superheavy Boosters built. Apollo achieved Manned flight on its 7th launch, Mercury similarly achieved human flight on its 7th launch, the Space Shuttle achieved it on its 6th flight. At this point Musk is go slow and break stuff not go fast.
Thanks for sharing. The gold is the stainless steel body and the green is the Inconel engines burning up on re-entry, after the Flight Termination System blew it all up. Edit: It looks like Raptor uses copper for regenerative cooling channels. I think that's what I was thinking of for the green. Inconel may not burn green, but copper could.
Ya we had an anomaly, that is why it's a "test" launch. Just think, just 40 yrs ago we were lucky if we saw a launch every two years, if that , we're launching two rockets within 24 hours.. Congratulations to Jeff and Elon along with their teams....
I know it's because they practically have blank check for everything, but apollo have quite a good launch cadence while being the largest rocket of its time.
@@refindoazhar1507not to mention they didn't blow up and actually made it to the moon and back. But there was no blank check. Had they failed the way starship has, it's questionable how long the program would have kept going. And even though they were successful, they were cancelled anyway by the mid 70s. Not seeing a "blank check" there.
@@slartibartfast1268They had, at least relative to modern budgets, a blank check to develop and fly Apollo 11. After that, they had to sit on the side of the road and beg congressmen for spare change as they passed by.
@@slartibartfast1268 the cost to launch a single saturn V is about 10x the launch cost of a starship. They spent $50 billion for the project, AFAIK starship project hasn't even reach $10 billion and hasn't (hopefully never) killed a people.
@@slartibartfast1268 they got cancelled because the space race has ended and there is no economic interest to keep it going, starship will be mainly used for launching starlink. Even if other part of the plan got cancelled, starlink alone is a sufficient reason to keep it going for a long while.
It'll be very interesting to see the collision between rapid iterative testing and "Yeah you actually have to do this shit safely, carefully, and reliably" if/when this thing makes it out of the prototype phase.
The prototype phase is the time to (responsibly and professionally) play around with design and launch parameters and features and figure out what can, can't, will, and won't work. The FAA will use a lot more scrutiny about mishaps once they move into the operational phase. SpaceX is engaging in _carpe diem_ to develop a set of design and operational parameters, features, and techniques that will be written in tablets, not scribbled in the sand, for an operational permit. The amount of visible testing, including the failures, is as valuable in the private capital space as USA's policy of transparency with NASA was valuable to the US in the PR and confidence in gov't. space during the 'Space Race' and the Skylab & Orbiter programs. Potential custimers and investors can _see,_ not just hear about, SpaceX wilfully making or accepting multiple failures, innovating and improving the design, policies, procedures, and processes, and trying again. Getting through all of that instills confidence in the wise and the saavy that that _won't_ happen once Starship is declared operational and Starbase (& potentially Cape Canaveral) is 'open for business.'
I understand the desire to have "maybe not trigger the FTS and see if starship can do the landing regime and steer itself to the water." But FTS is like the last line of "oh shit something has gone off the rail, abort now" panic button, I think the condition for it has to be kept as simple as possible because this last option cannot fail.
Yeah, as someone who frequently travels across that region, I would much prefer a single semi controllable large stainless steel object crossing flight paths as opposed to hundreds of smaller uncontrollable stainless steel pieces. This one gave me goosebumps.
Absolutely. Somebody else commented that these things could steer off-course due to the aerodynamic surfaces. But in the middle of the ocean that would hardly matter I think. Basically it comes down to "terminate only if the projected touch down is less than x kilometers from land"
The thing is that the smaller bits are more predictable than the starship without communication and control surfaces pointing somewhere you don't know. The affected corridor would be larger without the termination system
Risk from debris: after Pan Am 103 (Lockerbie) primary radar was still picking up debris over an hour after the explosion, so airlines are wise to avoid the potential area of spacecraft wreckage for some considerable time after it has apparently passed over.
To be fair, the contents of a 747 and Starship (not to mention speed) are very different. In terms of contents a 747 that is exploded at altitude by a bomb and is loaded with all sorts of materials that will NOT fall to the ground quickly (insulation, padding, clothing, fabrics etc.) on hour seems reasonable. Something constructed of the sorts of materials that Starship is (namely stainless) traveling at Mach 20 and going thru reentry will clear a path much faster. Not to mention how much of those materials burn up. All that stainless is coming down very fast (already at extremely high speed, and even as it slows down, we're not talking material equivalent to fluff or feathers. Gravity still applies and at terminal velocity the airspace should be clear quickly. Not sure about all those burned up materials in gaseous/dust form, but IMHO, for something like a SS, 30 minutes would have been mor than enough time.
@ oh dear. None of the materials you mention would produce a radar return. Things that did produce a return were still falling an hour later. Even a small item, struck at speed, can do terrible damage. Maybe you didn’t notice the Jeju Air disaster?
This will probably get lost in the shuffle, but... First, Thank You. As a physics professor no-nonsense but still entertaining explanations can be hard to come by. Second, i've been actually scraping out the speed and altitude data for a few flights now, and in doing it for this one I Started with the Ship engine failures. There's no detectable drop in acceleration when the first sea-level engine drops out (accel_6engine = 26 or 27 m/s^2, accel_5engine about the same), but the acceleration drops significantly when the first vacuum raptor drops out (accel_3engines = 18 m/s^2). The acceleration plummets right at the end as well, and while it's tough to know what the delay (if any) is between the speed updates and the engine diagram it's an interesting tidbit. Finally, the LOX level doesn't drop slower, but freezes and stops dropping at T+7m54s. At that point there were still 5 engines firing, so it seems very unlikely there was no drop in LOX level (while the CH4 level continues to drop). This looks more like a sensor failure to me. I haven't had the time to scrap the Booster velocity and accelerations and burn times, but it will be interesting to see how the single-engine-out on the boostback changed timelines (comparing this Ship to previous may be a fool's errand, but Booster was still very similar to IFT5 & IFT6).
@joeteichert6821 a loss of power to the communications system would make sense. That still leaves dozens of individual points of failure to consider though, especially since I'm sure there's redundancy in those systems. It could also be that the loss of the engines caused the ship to flip/roll uncontrollably which could lead to signal loss if the transceivers are directional in nature(idk for sure, but a steerable phased array antenna makes the most sense for long distance coms to starlink)
DAYUMMM... that is some BADA$$ video! WOW!!! Wish there had been such great onboard footage of Saturn V launches back in the day. There was some great video of launches, just not as much for actual flights.
Yep, we may not have learned anything from a successful booster catch, but hopefully we learn something from the starship failure. The result of learning is safety in this case. So, this launch will make starship safer; not so much the booster. And that's good.
Maybe not the perfect outcome - but SpaceX test alot to expose flaws and learn from failures and weak points Maybe not the more usual design method in aerospace industry But still another great launch from Superheavy, and they are learning all the time and pushing boundaries!!!!
I'm honestly don't know. A pathfinder is perfectly fine. You want to get stuff out of the door to have a prove of concept. But when you are talking about an actual product, in this case getting tons of stuff into orbit, you want to slow down iteration and work on actually having a product. So far we seem to have a heavy booster that can return to base and lift quite a nice payload up to 90km or so. Nice. But the second stage is no where near anything viable. First and foremost, it has no payload and no means to get any payload that is bigger then a floppy disk out of the ship. So as of now, Starship can't get anything anybody would pay for into Orbit. This is a huge problem! This is not a product! We should never forget, the goal is not to land stuff on earth, the goal is to get huge payloads into orbit and beyond! So, my question is... are we still in the pathfinder stage to figure out, how and if a second stage is possible?
@@spanke2999it's a research rocket not a commercial service yet right? Isn't HLS going to be completely different from a human rated starship from launch compared to the Orion docking I mean who's even paid for a starship launch? The falcon heavy has 3 launches a year excluding starlink for starship? Who's the private non government customer?
Dunno about the FTS; SpaceX will have that data. But StarShip would have been tumbling before it lost telemetry, so it's likely it would have disassembled itself violently once it got into thickish air.
That depends on how it was programmed, and whether the tanks were still pressurized to provide attitude control. And if that last engine was shut down. If it had attitude control so it could keep itself shield first in the extreme upper atmosphere, it could have used its flaps in the high, mid and lower atmosphere to re-enter in a controlled manner.
@@robertbackhaus8911 Maybe not? With the last engine running being a Merlin Vacuum, it would have been a huge amount of offset thrust to make up, even for a short period, putting it into a vigorous tumble. That would likely have uncovered the propellant sumps and likely have caused severe damage to the engine(s) if they managed to shut down before blowing up.
Well heck!! The term "it isn't rocket science" is rooted in absolute truth, rocket science is bloody hard to get right all the time, and the brave men and women involved in its development are true heroes today, and in the past, particularly those who have lost their lives trying to push the boundaries of space exploration. Good luck to all in the future, and God speed!
Hi Scott! European Space Engineer here! As part of the French space law we have the requirement to fragment any rocket stage falling back to earth if there is still any (solid or liquid) propellant in them. The goals are 2: (1) to avoid any propellant detonation during impact on ground, and (2) smaller debris have smaller kinetic energy hence are less dangerous.
Regarding the risk of collision with aircrafts, the flight safety corridor is determined considering many many degraded scenarios. Also, the neutralisation is performed as low as possible to avoid spreading debris over a large area.
EDIT: (3) neutralising also allows to ensure that all propulsion is stopped (in case you still have a doubt), thus ensuring that rest of the flight is ballistic. If there is some propulsion left, the stage could deviate a bit still and the final debris could be even further from the flight path, increasing the risk of falling on some aircraft. With a ballistic trajectory, it’s easier to identify where debris will fall and which aircraft to divert (I.e. the one in vicinity of the flight path).
Exactly what I thought !!! No of course, just kidding. Thanks for the explanation !
sure they have smaller kinetic energies but starship was projected to impact the ocean, it doesn't matter how large the kinetic energy is if it is impacting a body of water...
Thats great insite! In this case would it have been better to reenter the atmosphere first then make it go bang?
Assuming communication hadn't been lost after telemetry was cut to the stream?
@@benkai09 That's the problem. If you lose telemetry you've probably also lost the ability to send commands from the ground. Provisions to activate or not activate the self destruct (or flight termination system if you prefer) have to be coded in advance anticipating a loss of comms.
Regarding (1), for an ocean impact fire risk is minimal as water is a great heatsink, plus SpaceX hardware burns methane+LOX, so there's minimal toxicity risk to the environment from the fuel (as opposed to something like a UDMH+N2O4 booster): LOX and Methane are both fairly nontoxic, both will tend to disperse into the atmosphere as they aren't liquid at ambient temperature (so what toxicity methane does have won't poison many fish), and on the off chance they do burn on impact, they'll go to H2O + CO2, which are pretty much harmless.
As to (2), once you're past the apex of your trajectory, "as low as possible" becomes "as late as possible", which means that if your propellant is nontoxic and the impact point is over water, you really do have to consider the possibility that holding fire on range safety entirely is the best course of action.
The nickle and chrome in the stainless steel really ads some nice colors to that Starship re-entry.
The gold is the stainless steel body and the green is the Inconel engines burning, respectively.
@@LoanwordEggcorn green would be the copper jacket of the combustion chamber, I don't think Inconel burns green.
're-entry' is a term reserved for returning in one piece. This is just an epic failure.
@@rosaliebent4833reentry is a technical term describing the atmospheric entry of an object returning from space. It does not have any implications on the success of the maneuver.
Columbia broke up during reentry. MIR was destroyed during reentry.
@@rosaliebent4833 re-entry is whenever anything falls back into the atmosphere. they did not want it in so many pieces or so soon but it is a reentry
No fluff just straight to the point explaining the whole launch which i sadly missed watching live. Scott is by far the best space commentator on the platform.
Agree!
Welcome to my reply where I'm going to use as many words as I can to drag out the view time but first a look at our metrics and a word for our sponsors...
Thank you for getting in, giving real information, and flying safe.
President Elon likes to hide info
I basically said exactly the same thing. The....... I called it narration incorrectly of course because I forgot the word commentary 😅😂 was fantastic i thought. He should have a full-time job doing this.
Agree!
I do think that booster slew before catch is amazing - it’s much greater and more dramatic displacement than I had ever imagined it would use.
It's sort of always been a spacex policy to fly it in to the pad at the "last second" so to speak. Falcon 9 does the same anyways. I think the idea is if something fails right before landing they can steer it away from the tower/pad.
It makes sense though. You want it to miss the pad if the relight fails.
Like balancing a broom on your finger.
@@sstroh08 Aim it so it'll pancake next to the expensive tower and not into it.
@@misterprimeminister473 Yes exactly
Pressure in excess of vent capacity is my new favorite euphemism for explosion.
....leading to rapid unscheduled disassembly.
It's not a euphemism for that though, the explosion is a separate event from the "pressure in excess of vent capacity". The story here is that the pressure build-up led to a fire, the fire led to a loss of control. The loss of control led to a deviation from the intended flight path/profile, which eventually led to an explosion - either from aerodynamic forces or from the FTS.
I guess technically explosions _are_ fires, albeit very fast ones. From that perspective it seems there were two fires - first a slow one caused (or allowed) by the pressure build-up, and later a fast one caused by something else.
"Pressure in excess of vent capacity" is my existing euphemism for "shouldn't have eaten at Taco Bell, now I've got cramps".
Can't we just say it blew the f-ck up?
A clear case of euphemization!
1:07 You really have to appreciate when forces are so great that it makes steel flap around like it’s a bit of fabric.
Shitty design/assembly not "great forces."
IT'S A CARTOON
@@robertblue4630 you're saying there are no great forces involved in a rocket launch?
😮
@@harrymacdonald858 If so, are you Heckle or Jeckle?
8:59 The difference in apparent speed between fragments closer to us vs further away from us gives this a really nice 3-dimensional feel that you normally don't get from 2D images on a screen.
If you saw the video from the cockpit of an airplane, there was a really strong parallax there too. Without a background reference other than the cockpit window it’s hard to judge this, but I’d guess the closest pieces looked to have an angular velocity 3x that of the furthest. That’s pretty scary to me because it would mean the spread of the debris is a lot wider than the actual distance to it. In other words, way too close for comfort. 😬
Great video as always. Great info with no fluff. Thanks for getting these out so quickly after the launches with some insight into what happened.
Yes yes. The Manley Analysis is here already. Entertaining and objective.
The fact that his objectivity needs to be noted, is all telling for the current political climate.
@@JZsBFF Yeah, the usual "Didn't go too well for them" if similar things happen to chinese vehicles has to be reevaluated. But hey, it's just Tax-Dollars or Tax-Yuan anyway.
Manalysis.
Now I am waiting for the Girley version.
Manly yes but I like it too! (Irish Spring Soap advert reference)
honestly this catch looked smoother than the first
Looked like it to me too. Practice and all that... Really amazing.
you can tell it's real because it looks so fake.
Looked faster too. Less slow hovering in front of the arms like last time
A lot less flame this time, too
Smoother than Booster Elons Gaming Skills
Hopefully the boom was the FTS. That makes the failure much simpler. Fuel leak, propulsion failure, trajectory outside of mission parameters, FTS activates. A LOT less worrisome than "it randomly exploded and we don't know why"
If they try hard enough they could perfect a 100% failure rate as long as the tax payer is willing to continue funding Musk's vanity project.
Makes me wonder when there are passengers on board will there also be an FTS? That would scare me personally.
@@thulyblu5486Yet again why there needs to be an ejection system. Manual FTS and a bailout option for crew. Of course once in space that stuff can be disabled.
@@thulyblu5486 I'd presume there will be. If you lose control of the thing when it's coming down, FTS would be safer than try to guess where it'll crash. Crew may be fewer losses than spaceship crashing into an apartment block middle of a random city somewhere.
I imagine after losing the last of all three vectorable raptors the fts immediately triggered for obvious reasons
Such quality content. This is fantastic. I'm glad I caught the launch live yesterday.
The cameras shots both from and of the booster of this flight are some the best I’ve ever seen, you can see the atmosphere get denser clearly as it descends.
This is probably the single aspect where SpaceX makes consistent progress. Video feed was non-existent at first, then very spotty and limited during their first few successful returns, but improved greatly overtime.
Honestly that’s one of the biggest reasons I support space x. They show us the failures, the successes and everything in between!
a singularly marvelous video for such a short production time, scott. you are the hero scientist we need and deserve.
What a wholesome comment. May you not read the others.
🤔... "hero scientist"...
Do you mean Scott Manley is our IRL Gordon Freeman?!! 😆😁
Super cool to see that the engine that was shut down on boost back was able to relight upon landing
I noticed that but had the thought, if it didn't relight on the descent burn, should we risk it blowing up with a second relight attempt. Would be interesting to know what happened there. I wondered if it could be the re-used engine, apparently it was not.
@@paulwilson8367 The reused engine was on the outer most ring, from pictures. I wondered if it was a propellant feed problem for that one engine. I wonder if they even would have had the time or capability to have a human make the call to try and use that engine on landing... I would be unsurprised if the computer just adapted to the engine not lighting and just didn't have any reasons to not try it again.
I half suspected that might have been an intentional stress test to keep one engine off for the boost back
This is a secret, so don't tell anyone, but SpaceX has an unpaid intern ride long with the first stage booster so that if an engine won't start he can give it a swift kick or two.
"Have you tried turning it off and then on again?"
I absolutely LOVE that we live in a time that a huge portion of the population have high resolution, high quality cameras in their pockets at all times and can capture stuff like this in an instant. If this happened 25 years ago, nobody would have video of this.
You haven't seen the hi resolution pictures of the Saturn V and space shuttle launches.
That separation and boostback shot was awesome. Best one yet
"I'm sorry that you had to watch all that vertical video, but its what the Kids seem to like these days"
Scott speaking the truth, this is an abomination that we should fight ;-)
I feel like todays kids can't be bothered to turn their phone by 90 degrees. Too much effort. It's sad.
It should be illegal. I'm going to start a petition.
@@bellissimo4520 Can't fight kids: they have way more time and way more energy than you or I do. This has always been true.
Imagine watching vertical video on a 32:9 monitor...
The bad part is that some phone cameras film wide in vertical and then go upright when turned sideways. Still not use to it on my phone, and it's apparently not a setting that can be changed.
Some fireworks to kick off the new year! Still an enjoyable launch and half-landing.
SO SPACE IS A CARTOON
hence why this man will never bring man to the moon. Meanwhile "Failure is not an option"- Apollo missions
Yup, very pretty fireworks at the taxpayer expense as we keep shoveling government contracts to oligarchs
@@gorak9000I somehow figure you don’t mind taxpayers paying trillions for government social programs
Until next time, you're Jeff Geerling
I was waiting for this.. and as always, you did not disapoint! Thank you Mr Manley!
Fly Safe!
Scott, this is your sweet spot! These detailed, thorough, and clear breakdowns of events are just excellent. Thank you! It's almost worth having a mishap just to hear your analysis of it. We have our very own one-person NTSB.
very well said! so much better than I could of but exactly what I thought
NTSB is a stretch - Scott's obviously not in a position to inspect debris or raw flight data. His vids can't be as detailed as an NTSB accident report would be. But it's definitely fun to have an armchair sleuth who knows what to look for on a preliminary basis!
But these graphics were confusing. Numerous times he flew through them without some visual cursor or drawn circles directing your attention to the item he speaks of. The hot zone and flight diversion graphic was useless. Normally he does better, and other channels spend the time to do so profitably. I think he rushed this one out while the topic is trending.
Scott refers to spacex as "Us" repeatedly - completely toxic pretender of a commentator.
That shot following 4:42 just goes so hard. All those shockwaves, the compression heating between the nozzles, the clouds shifting between states as the ship passes. Thats like one of those that CG artists will use as reference material going forward.
This is why I think the saying "Life imitates art" is backwards.
@@HuntingTarg it is backwards because the forward relationship of "Art imitates life" is too obvious, so obvious in fact we had been doing it since 40,000 B.C. when the first cavemen decided to put their handprints on a wall as a record of their existence.
But as our technology progressed we began to be able to change the world around us to match our vision instead of the other way around, and it is then, "Life imitates art" became a reality as we not only made records of the past, but visions for the future.
If you ask the wrong people they already think it's CGI. 😂
When I saw that yesterday, I was in AWE. Amazing camera angle and detail!
What FANTASTIC narration mate. You should have a full-time job doing this. I've watched loads of these videos narrated by other people, and they just don't come close. Keep up the great work. I will of course be SUBSCRIBING
Nothing touches the Manley Analysis! It's like the dessert after watching the launch!
He has a full time position. 😂
Scott Manley is the space guy for me as well. Especially his question from the viewer series where you can see his knowledge in real time spitting facts.
Welcome to the club!
When i saw the starship falling after exploding i thaught of that one song where it says "THEY CALL ME MR FARENHEIT!"
"I'M MOVING AT THE SPEED OF LIIIIGHT"
Last time I was this early, KSP2 was exciting.
Same lol
Sad but true
so you never Early ?! lol
What happened with ksp2? I was out
It was at ksp2 announcement?
Just want to say Scott Manley is obviously the best presenter when it comes to space issues in the world, that's it.
But these graphics were confusing. Numerous times he flew through them without some visual cursor or drawn circles directing your attention to the item he speaks of. The hot zone and flight diversion graphic was useless. Normally he does better, and other channels spend that time profitably. I think he rushed this one out while the topic is trending.
Marcus House for me.
Scott refers to spacex as "Us" repeatedly - completely toxic pretender of a commentator.
Musk and Bezos said earlier in a joint news conference, "Put together our missions were perfect today"
Too bad this didn't actually happen, except that starship's booster took off and landed while new glenn's didn't, and new glenn's second stage went to orbit while starship's didn't.
A memorable day in the history of space flight.
Was New Glenn's booster supposed to land?
@@bosoerjadi2838it was a secondary goal of their mission. they attempted the booster landing, but it wasn’t necessary to the success of the mission.
@@bosoerjadi2838yes, on BO's landing barge named after Bezos' mom. stationed in the Atlantic Ocean, between CapeCanaveral & Bermuda.
@@bosoerjadi2838yes, but they found out that orbital velocity landings are harder than hopping... Who would have though 😂
We can be so happy to have 2 companies rivaling each other like this.
Impressed looking at the view from the catch tower... I didn't appreciate how big the grid fins are!
love the way the booster sat there very gently swinging, after burning off all that energy the only energy left was for a gentle graceful swing. amazing
That got me thinking that they're going to eventually have to figure out a way to quickly arrest that motion. If it's a windy day, the motion won't necessarily stop on its own, and Booster is going to need to be perfectly vertical for the trip back down to stage 0.
Controlling such brutal forces and explosiveness with such a degree of precision has something poetic about it.
The booster returning to earth intact is more exciting to me than the payload it launched.
Yeah, eventually one or both of those chopsticks is going to snap off from metal fatigue.
With the catastrophic failures they're having, how long until the booster slams into the launch area at 1 km/s detonating all the fuel containers...
I couldn't wait for this video! Thanks Scott. Fly Safe.
14:13 You definitely don’t want that, because without a flight termination, the uncontrolled control surfaces could push it off-course, while it’s unlikely for the spacecraft to maintain structural integrity before it turns into god’s greatest shotgun. So they traded off a smaller affected area for a more predictable affected area.
It might not be uncontrollable, though --- if there's enough battery and structural integrity to use the flaps to steer the vehicle down through reentry, then that's a plausible reason to _not_ trigger the FTS even if it leaves its designated corridor. It would be complicated to do, as it would all have to happen autonomously; the onboard software would need to try and assess how badly things are going wrong, select a safe target and aim for it, and having worked with computers for years I'm not sure I'd trust one to do that right!
This was not an RSO-directed flight termination. This was a complete loss of control that caused serious danger to civilian aircraft. Quit riding elmo rod.
@@TwoTreesStudio Danger to people on the ground, as well.
The fact the FAA approved this flight corridor in the first place tells me that they were already completely bought off by SpaceX and all of their useless handslaps were just a show for those few gullible rubes who still believe there's any good left in the world.
Wouldn't a nice compact range safety nuke pretty much annihilate everything? No messy debris hurtling earthward. Sure, crew & pax in nearby aircraft might need those B-52-like reflective curtains or possibly welding goggles, and we might lose some lights and electronics from the pulse, but it would make a glorious display, and remind Canada, Greenland and Panama who is really in charge 🙂
@@bewilderbeestie But the telemetry/communication has been lost this time. So it is not safe for the space ship to further auto-steer itself.
Great video Scott, thanks for putting it together so quickly after your New Glen launch video.
Man, you are KILLING it today with the updates! Massive props for the really quick videos!
Honestly, the debris was so beautiful on reentry in an aesthetic sense at least, a rainbow of metalic plasmas. Will be interesting to see future failure analysis.
That's what the dinosaurs said
A billion dollar show
@@sciteceng2hedz358Fk took a spit take at this. 😂
Best firework of the New Year! 😂
Thanks captain obvious. We saw the same vid and heard the same things. Do you have any original thoughts or observations that weren't mentioned or just the same one that echoed through the vid?
Oh yeah I am definitely subscribing. You filled 17 minutes with ZERO fluff. You touched upon a lot of great points!
I love Scott's presentation, he's been doing it for years too, if you ever want to look up some of his older breakdowns of launches, they're full of great technical analysis.
Welcome to the club! lol
Welcome! Been here 12 years and his content has been consistently good!
If you're into space flight and related topics there is probably no better UA-cam channel than this one
you will not regret it!
I love your thorough breakdowns Scott. Thanks!
It's pretty amazing that we can see some type of flammable gas venting out of the starboard aft hinge opening and then cascading engine failures that followed. The "vent event" theory is definitely plausible.
Great summary once again Scott! Cheers
That debris and the multiple contrails reminded me of something. RIP STS 107 Crew and Columbia. You will always be remembered. 💐💐💐💐💐💐💐.
💙
Never forget. STS-107, STS-25 and Apollo 1.
yes, except this was entertainement, and that was horror, rip.
Columbia's destruction actually shook my house for several minutes. I had no idea what it was (I didn't go outside, I expected it to be something on the ground I wouldn't see) ... only found out when I went to Home Depot 30 minutes or so later and people were talking about it. I found out much later that at least one piece splashed down in the lake just a few miles away. ... also I was at school in the school library watching the launch with the class and even on a call with a guy at NASA when Challenger exploded. I still remember something like "hold on a second, something's going on", my friend saying "maybe the shuttle blew up", then EVERYONE staring at him like he caused it when we saw it on the TV.
I guess shuttle launches were still special at the time... at least enough for a class to have a watch party and have a NASA guy on the phone talking about space history.
I get my space news from the man who flys safe, the king of the Kerbals, Scott Manley! Fly safe!
Scott is only the prince-regent. King of the Kerbals will always be Harvester, aka Felipe.
Yay the explanation of what happened is here! Thx so much for the time you put into these videos, I'm way too lazy to go research this myself.
It's sad that they didn't get to test so many things. They couldn't test the Pez dispenser, the catch hardware in re-entry, and the actively-cooled tiles to name a few.
they likely weren't going to try to capture starship. booster capture was the only one.
@@amentco8445 I think he mention about the catch hardware in the starship not about the tower, like gimbling the engine to land softly on the calculated spot, same like flight 6. this time more accurate
They were going to test if the hardpoints, that would be recuired for future landings, were able to survive reentry well enough.
This thing was evidently a sloppy job; the next iteration will likely be better integrated, and knowing SpaceX will also have some additional new tech.
Thanks for the fast update!
Ngl, that Starship debris trail reminded me of Space Shuttle Columbia
I was a bit horrified.
Honestly, I don't remember Columbia as being anywhere near as colorful. My dad and I were trying to watch reentry that morning, because it wasn't often that it would pass that close to us. It was far enough north of us that it wasn't super distinct, but it was mostly all white-yellow sparks. Still get chills remembering that moment.
At least with Starship destructive tests, there hasn't been that sort of loss of life. "Go fast and break stuff" engineering only works when lives aren't on the line.
That many changes its one thing after another failure just chasing their tail now😢
That's the reason failure like this are so important early on the development. You don't want that to happen with Astronauts onboard. Test flights without failure are not ideal anyway, you want the maximum number of different failures when doing a test flight.
@@jpgv_musicI don't even want this to happen with payload onboard :(
Great video, watched it with my children who loved it. Thanks Scott keep up the good work!
Cool that they caught the booster, but I'm more a cheerleader for the pointy end where the people would go-
Don't disregard the shaft so easy. The shaft does the work, the head gets the credit.😊
Penile joke detected 🧐
@@Salty_Balls She said!
Reusability is the key to economical space access. I don't care about people going up, per se. I want massive payloads that can carry robots and 3D printers, to establish space industry. (Yes, it will need to be safe enough to carry some skilled human operators, but I'm fine with the "oil platform" business model, as opposed to the "jet travel" model.)
Nah. There‘s not going to be intelligent life in there, only elon fans
I think the methane leak was lot bigger than Elon tries to put it. If you see how fast the tank empties, this must have been a catastrophic damage to some large fuel line.
Which is in itself not a bad news, perhaps just a pipe went loose or something, meaning, fixing it will be easy.
He indicates that it was a pretty big leak - big enough to overwhelm vent capacity, which is pretty large.
All the message says, at this early stage, is they saw high pressure in the ceiling area, which indicates a big leak. His message showed that they didn't yet know whether the leak was oxygen or methane. Pretty clear it is methane, based on the tank level graph on the webcast.
The sequence of the engines shutting down if the display can be trusted for that, could also give some clues to what happened. Since some of the engines still worked and it is known that there is one large pipe from fuel tanks to engine area, that component likely didn’t fail. They probably have some kind of hardware off from the main pipe that feeds into the turbos of engines, and some engines were still getting fuel when the leak begins. I would guess that one or more engines pump connected hardware failed catastrophically.
@@notanytimenowAs long as tank rupture can be ruled out (and I think it safely can, the flight engineers should have enough data to determine that), it's more 'analyze, iterate, move forward' with launch 8.
@@robertbackhaus8911 The most likely scenario with the fuel graph is that a smaller leak starting a fire in the space caused damage to parts of engines and one or more of the failed engines sprung a leak, resulting in the large methane loss. Probably a methane feed line or feed line flange failure.
Usually the turbo pump explodes
More common than a hose failing
thank you for the recap! seeing that video of starship breaking up from the person in the plane was absolutely insane
Twitter handle of said user recording from plane? Edit: I see @Surdys_ciencia posted views from a plane cockpit.
I missed it. What's the timestamp?
Another excellent breakdown with fabulous video. Thanks!
Unfortunate about Starship's fate, but wow it's wild that the insane booster catching procedure is already becoming taken for granted.
2 captures of a scrap booster and 5 failures. Do you mean that we can take failure for granted?
@@duviworthing SpaceX didn't attempt a catch on the first four flights anyways
There was no catch attempt for Flight 6 as the catch tower failed automated health checks, so it (the booster) instead made a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
So far, there have only been 2 attempts at a booster catch, and both were successful
Tell everyone you know nothing about science and engineering without actually saying it
@@duviworthing and what have you really built anywhere apart from criticisms?
@@D_Maverick-b3b One doesn't need to be able to build anything to recognise abject failure
I'd love to see this thing in person. First, the size is hard for me to comprehend. Second, the booster landing looks so impossible it seems almost like CGI 😮
Yeah, that booster is huge! There is a clip of a man walking under and then the camera zooms out to get the booster inside the frame and the man is hard to see.
This is the 2nd succesfull booster landing on the "chopsticks". Amazing, definitely.
To give you an idea the hot staging ring on it's own is about as tall as you are. You could fit a small apartment on top of it.
A superbly intelligent analysis. Thank you! 😊❤😊
I love the standing waves in the exhaust. That's some serious tuning, and it makes me happy.
Such a bitter sweet launch! The excitement of the second successful catch of a sky scraper, followed by the heartbreak of a dramatic RUD. Total roller coaster.
Elmo simps are thanking their lucky stars that they haven't killed anyone yet. And it does come down to pure luck. They'll be lucky if the FAA lets them fly again this year.
Highly unlikely comment...FAA allows for exactly this type of situation within a certain margin...afterall the license is for a prototype development, the chance of catastrophic results is never off the table...only question is whether it crossed outside of the allowance they were given(Which is highly unlikely as the ship was on course when it exploded, meaning any debris would still fall within the designated splash zone)
@@TwoTreesStudio👆
See above. Go back under your bridge troll.
Oh yes, having to watch all that vertical video was horrible, I am much to old! 😋
That made me actually laugh out loud, so thanks for that one! 😆🥰
very happy to hear you call out all the vertical videos.... when filming, turn your cellphones folks
Except when you a filming something that fits vertically as is the case with the debris reentry.
@@ericpaul4575That depends on the AoA you're viewing from. It also depends on whether a particular uploader is thinking about the framing of the shot, about making a short that their subs will watch, or just wants to hold their phone more comfortably...
I don't get the continued hate on this anymore.
Most people view videos on phones now which are naturally vertical, and if on a PC the screen is big enough to still show enough detail.
@@cornishcactus Most people watch videos on phones?? If that is true, I feel sorry for most people. Phones are such a shitty way to watch videos.
Nice update, thanks for sharing
The FTS serves 2 purposes
1. Quickly remove any remaining fuel from the rocket which would add to the vehicle’s kinetic energy and support a big boom on impact
2. Increase the aerodynamic drag to further reduce the kinetic energy of the system
The result is a significantly less energetic impact with the earth
And terminate thrust to keep the vehicle as close to the assigned trajectory as possible.
@@josephastier7421yeah this one is significant. If it was just about reducing impact energy, they'd be better off not doing it since there is only ocean east of Turks and Caicos. But they wanted to make sure that a floundering intact starship wouldn't end up steering outside of the hazard zone and likely exploding anyway. This way all they had to say to pilots was "stay/get out of the predefined hazard zone in a minute or two" rather than GET AS FAR AS YOU CAN FROM FROM THESE SPECIFIC COORDINATES WITHIN 8.5 SECONDS
most of the heat-tiles survived, scary
@ that’s to be expected. Heatshield tiles are incredibly lightweight since they’re full of voids to limit heat transfer. That also means they aren’t much of a hazard. It’s like a falling sponge
Not often I disagree with you Scott, the exclusion zone that came into effect once Starship exploded did its job - and prevented aircraft flying through the debris field - and the initiation of the FTS kept the debris within that designated zone. Disagree with you that FTS could have been delayed - as without controlled flight Starship could have gone outside this zone - it's a lifting body after all - not a ballistic projectile.
Agreed. Except I might have more disagreements with Scott than you
Several aircraft declared fuel emergencies (maydays) and had to land inside the debris area because their destinations and alternates were both on the other side of the zone. San Juan exceeded ramp capacity but still had to accept fuel emergencies. The exclusion zone did not do its job. Pilots and dispatchers had no idea there was even a launch in the area of their flights. This was a dangerous situation for many flights.
I'm with Blancolirio on this - SpaceX's philosophy of constantly pushing their designs to the limit and accepting the inevitable massive explosions they're gonna get is not a responsible use of our airspace. The FAA was right to shut them down.
@@beenaplumber8379 Wow - it seems like the FAA's procedures for managing exclusion zones need revising. That there were air traffic controllers unaware of the potential exclusion zones, and that this information had not been relayed to aircraft operators and pilots is shocking.
Not SpaceX's problem though.
@ No, that's not what I said, and that's not at all what happened. Once the explosion happened and the debris started raining down, controllers were made aware, and they routed aircraft away from the zone. It was dispatchers and pilots who were not made aware in advance that this might be a problem, so they did not designate alternates on both sides of the Starship's flight path. Effective flight planning was made impossible. The exclusion zone (it has a proper name, but I can't remember it) was put up, and pilots were directed away from it, but where were they supposed to go? They had no planning in place to deal with being stuck on one side of the zone when their destinations and alternates were on the other side. San Juan was the obvious place for many flights to divert (which is no small thing to do), but they had their own problems with a runway closure or something... abnormal ops that made them less able to accommodate the additional traffic. So instead of flying into debris and crashing, aircraft were running perilously low on fuel and flying into the zone anyway to avoid crashing from fuel starvation, landing at an airport that could not effectively accommodate them. Yeah, the FAA could have done more, but the cavalier attitude of SpaceX about sending spacecraft up to explode over crowded airspace could have gotten a lot of people killed. This was inevitable and irresponsible.
@@beenaplumber8379Yes - and I agree with you that the procedures need revising to ensure that everyone engaged with managing or using the airspace within the potential exclusion zone are aware in advance and can make appropriate plans.
Not SpaceX's issue though - unless SpaceX did not follow FAA guidelines?
Always appreciate your post launch analysis. Thanks!😊
What an amazing video 🤩! So impressive to watch that rocket go from space and returning to the exact same place it took off from.
Thank you for always providing interesting and unbiased information regarding rocket launches and failures, it's why you are my main go to channel for updates.
I love that we can always count on Scott Manley to make an after action report, when something goes wrong in space flight - thank you. Hopefully the issue is minor and we get flight 8 soon, for flight 7 we at least got a very expensive firework and booster catch.
I suspect the paperwork will take longer than the hardware fixes
@@boringusername792 This should definitely require a mishap investigation and conversations must be had about having larger exclusion zones as a contingency.
What a time to be alive and have access to such epic public and engineering footage! Not to mention the insanity of catching a skyscraper with basically chopsticks.
"Launch system that can recover rocket with chopsticks, can accomplish anything" 😁🥋
A great summary. Thank you very much!
Scott, Can you please make a video detailing all the saftey precautions the FAA and launch providers make prior to launching. I'm a afraid that the general public will see events like this and start to think rocket parts are going to start raining from the sky and hitting them in the face. I think its important that the general public understand all the effort that goes into keeping the public safe during launches.
Scott refers to spacex as "Us" repeatedly - completely toxic pretender of a commentator. I wouldn't trust his interpretation of collective safety.
Ellie in Space has a long interview with a commercial pilot on this.
@@JakeLeyman-q6d Is he though? Can you demonstrate even a single use of the 1st person plural in the video that unambiguously refers to SpaceX, and could not be instead refering to the whole community of space nerds?
@ Who talks like that? Professional commentators or fan boys?
I think boost back was a bit shorter than flight 5 even with one engine missing, and it happens a few Kilometer lower, meaning top speed in the atmosphere was around 300km/h less than flight 5 thus less heating I would assume
Edit: I totally forgot that V2 is heavier
Ship V2 is heavier than V1, so the booster didn't/couldn't go too far.
@omicael1 that makes sense, I forgot about that.
List of things guaranteed:
Excitement? Yep
Success? Definitely not
Giant firework show? Aye
I would still called it at least half success since they catch the booster
Definitely not a success but failures like are so important in this early development. Too bad, the landing catch was overshadowed by the upper stage rud.
Hi, failure leads to future success!
Meanwhile enjoy the light show.
Take care all and await the next launch. M.
@@markeh1971how many Saturn V exploded to get to the Moon? And it's 7th starship and he can't even get to the orbit with all the modern technology they couldn't even imagine in Apollo era.
@@wnekuu starship is a magnitude of an order more complex than the saturn v.
Another adult excellent video. Thank you, Mr. Manley
Wow that catch landing of the booster really is amazing.
I love Spacex but when you need no bias opinion/real analysis, Dj Manley is the man. ✌🏾❤️
Both Blue Origin and SpaceX had partially successful test launches. The world of space is getting definitely more exciting. Best wishes to both companies.
@ I agree, we are in a exiting time period of space exploration
Everything about space and spaceflight is Beautiful and terrifying at the same time. i never though starship could be an amazing big budget aerial firworks show.
Spot on Scott. Cheers for the recap.
Good to see them catch the booster again. Still gives me chills. Never in my life would I of thought commercial/privatized space flight would even be possible to this degree.
It isn't. This has all been funded by taxpayers.
Baaaaahahahahahahahahahahaha
@@ThatOpalGuy And Elon spending his money is that what u saying - Elon took 3 BILLION from Gov for "space" program - educate your self dont talk stupid things .
@@ThatOpalGuy DOGE it!
Well between Starship and New Glenn we have 1 payload successfully delivered to orbit and 1 booster successfully landed. So if we combine the two into Star-Glenn we have a 100% successfully launch!
But such a ship wouldn't have enough cargo space to carry those two egos. :)
They should fuse.
@ Like what? Jefflon? 🤣
@Dylius01 Yes, kind of depends on what you combine ;)
I am really impressed with how much often SpaceX launch again but i am really not impressed with how many failures ,how many fails had Saturn V rocket ,before any off simulation software there is now
This starship launch was such a kerbal launch
yes.
except it was not in sandbox mode.
we payed for that.
@expioreris Eh, kind of. We will pay 2.89 billion for Starship no matter how much money SpaceX uses to test it. Them blowing up a rocket doesn't cost any more to us.
@@expiorerisNobody concerned about Elon getting gov bids actually pays more taxes than they get in welfare or a disability payment.
"Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed" is also one way to describe the next presidency.
The transition between the "move fast and break stuff " mindset to the "slow, steady and safe" that is the standard in commercial aeronautics is going to be interesting to watch. I wonder how many toys will exit the pram in the process 😉
Yeah, it's going to be an interesting thing to watch. "Move fast and break stuff" is, at the very least, great for highly visible testing processes. You can see the work being done, it's very exciting, but that is _not_ how actually-operational aviation works, especially when there are customers involved. Caution and reliability are the aim of the game there.
It's a good job it's only tax money funding this farce
I mean they've already done this, it's called Falcon 9.
They kind of did it with Block 5 of Falcon 9 in order to fly crew. It's only had minor adjustments since then and usually only debuted with low-risk payloads.
Starship will likely be similar. Once it's more mature then design will be finalised, flown many times and only received minor adjustments which will be tested on cargo first.
Yeah look at Blue Origin, took its time but successfully made orbit on its first attempt, something Starship hasn't achieved after 13 Superheavy Boosters built. Apollo achieved Manned flight on its 7th launch, Mercury similarly achieved human flight on its 7th launch, the Space Shuttle achieved it on its 6th flight. At this point Musk is go slow and break stuff not go fast.
Thanks for sharing. The gold is the stainless steel body and the green is the Inconel engines burning up on re-entry, after the Flight Termination System blew it all up.
Edit: It looks like Raptor uses copper for regenerative cooling channels. I think that's what I was thinking of for the green. Inconel may not burn green, but copper could.
0:13 "RUDer, spectacularly" - Scott doing Scott
Really enjoyed watching your explanation after rocket launches. Thanks
Thank you for your knowledge and simple explanation! Love it
"My God Bones, what have I done?"
Ya we had an anomaly, that is why it's a "test" launch. Just think, just 40 yrs ago we were lucky if we saw a launch every two years, if that , we're launching two rockets within 24 hours..
Congratulations to Jeff and Elon along with their teams....
I know it's because they practically have blank check for everything, but apollo have quite a good launch cadence while being the largest rocket of its time.
@@refindoazhar1507not to mention they didn't blow up and actually made it to the moon and back. But there was no blank check. Had they failed the way starship has, it's questionable how long the program would have kept going. And even though they were successful, they were cancelled anyway by the mid 70s. Not seeing a "blank check" there.
@@slartibartfast1268They had, at least relative to modern budgets, a blank check to develop and fly Apollo 11. After that, they had to sit on the side of the road and beg congressmen for spare change as they passed by.
@@slartibartfast1268 the cost to launch a single saturn V is about 10x the launch cost of a starship. They spent $50 billion for the project, AFAIK starship project hasn't even reach $10 billion and hasn't (hopefully never) killed a people.
@@slartibartfast1268 they got cancelled because the space race has ended and there is no economic interest to keep it going, starship will be mainly used for launching starlink. Even if other part of the plan got cancelled, starlink alone is a sufficient reason to keep it going for a long while.
Great booster catch guys. 🚀👋🏻
It'll be very interesting to see the collision between rapid iterative testing and "Yeah you actually have to do this shit safely, carefully, and reliably" if/when this thing makes it out of the prototype phase.
The prototype phase is the time to (responsibly and professionally) play around with design and launch parameters and features and figure out what can, can't, will, and won't work. The FAA will use a lot more scrutiny about mishaps once they move into the operational phase. SpaceX is engaging in _carpe diem_ to develop a set of design and operational parameters, features, and techniques that will be written in tablets, not scribbled in the sand, for an operational permit.
The amount of visible testing, including the failures, is as valuable in the private capital space as USA's policy of transparency with NASA was valuable to the US in the PR and confidence in gov't. space during the 'Space Race' and the Skylab & Orbiter programs. Potential custimers and investors can _see,_ not just hear about, SpaceX wilfully making or accepting multiple failures, innovating and improving the design, policies, procedures, and processes, and trying again. Getting through all of that instills confidence in the wise and the saavy that that _won't_ happen once Starship is declared operational and Starbase (& potentially Cape Canaveral) is 'open for business.'
I understand the desire to have "maybe not trigger the FTS and see if starship can do the landing regime and steer itself to the water." But FTS is like the last line of "oh shit something has gone off the rail, abort now" panic button, I think the condition for it has to be kept as simple as possible because this last option cannot fail.
Yeah, as someone who frequently travels across that region, I would much prefer a single semi controllable large stainless steel object crossing flight paths as opposed to hundreds of smaller uncontrollable stainless steel pieces. This one gave me goosebumps.
Absolutely. Somebody else commented that these things could steer off-course due to the aerodynamic surfaces. But in the middle of the ocean that would hardly matter I think. Basically it comes down to "terminate only if the projected touch down is less than x kilometers from land"
The thing is that the smaller bits are more predictable than the starship without communication and control surfaces pointing somewhere you don't know. The affected corridor would be larger without the termination system
Yeah but they lost communication, so it wasn't semi controllable. It was completely uncontrolled and the only safe option is to nuke it.
Cool! Looks like the Autobots and Decepticons making a return to earth!
Wow you have the video up already. Impressive!
Elon's launches going about as well as his Path of Exile runs.
It'll be successful next next next year 😉
Lol, so Elon haters are using that as their new center point after not having anything else?
Risk from debris: after Pan Am 103 (Lockerbie) primary radar was still picking up debris over an hour after the explosion, so airlines are wise to avoid the potential area of spacecraft wreckage for some considerable time after it has apparently passed over.
To be fair, the contents of a 747 and Starship (not to mention speed) are very different. In terms of contents a 747 that is exploded at altitude by a bomb and is loaded with all sorts of materials that will NOT fall to the ground quickly (insulation, padding, clothing, fabrics etc.) on hour seems reasonable. Something constructed of the sorts of materials that Starship is (namely stainless) traveling at Mach 20 and going thru reentry will clear a path much faster. Not to mention how much of those materials burn up. All that stainless is coming down very fast (already at extremely high speed, and even as it slows down, we're not talking material equivalent to fluff or feathers. Gravity still applies and at terminal velocity the airspace should be clear quickly. Not sure about all those burned up materials in gaseous/dust form, but IMHO, for something like a SS, 30 minutes would have been mor than enough time.
@ oh dear. None of the materials you mention would produce a radar return. Things that did produce a return were still falling an hour later. Even a small item, struck at speed, can do terrible damage. Maybe you didn’t notice the Jeju Air disaster?
This will probably get lost in the shuffle, but... First, Thank You. As a physics professor no-nonsense but still entertaining explanations can be hard to come by.
Second, i've been actually scraping out the speed and altitude data for a few flights now, and in doing it for this one I Started with the Ship engine failures. There's no detectable drop in acceleration when the first sea-level engine drops out (accel_6engine = 26 or 27 m/s^2, accel_5engine about the same), but the acceleration drops significantly when the first vacuum raptor drops out (accel_3engines = 18 m/s^2). The acceleration plummets right at the end as well, and while it's tough to know what the delay (if any) is between the speed updates and the engine diagram it's an interesting tidbit.
Finally, the LOX level doesn't drop slower, but freezes and stops dropping at T+7m54s. At that point there were still 5 engines firing, so it seems very unlikely there was no drop in LOX level (while the CH4 level continues to drop). This looks more like a sensor failure to me.
I haven't had the time to scrap the Booster velocity and accelerations and burn times, but it will be interesting to see how the single-engine-out on the boostback changed timelines (comparing this Ship to previous may be a fool's errand, but Booster was still very similar to IFT5 & IFT6).
Thanks for calling out how bad vertical video is 😂 (it really makes it hard to view stuff)
I've never clicked on a video this fast 😅
I think you didn't explain it in the video or I missed it: why did we lose telemetry before the FTS was triggered?
I have the same question. Perhaps the fire from leaking propellant burned the communication wires, or caused a short-circuit?
I don’t think FTS triggered, it blew itself up on its own accord
We don't know because they lost telemetry. 🙄
@joeteichert6821 a loss of power to the communications system would make sense. That still leaves dozens of individual points of failure to consider though, especially since I'm sure there's redundancy in those systems.
It could also be that the loss of the engines caused the ship to flip/roll uncontrollably which could lead to signal loss if the transceivers are directional in nature(idk for sure, but a steerable phased array antenna makes the most sense for long distance coms to starlink)
@@lukezhang3017 you mean the FTS auto-triggered/self-activated right?
DAYUMMM... that is some BADA$$ video! WOW!!! Wish there had been such great onboard footage of Saturn V launches back in the day. There was some great video of launches, just not as much for actual flights.
So we caught the booster but blew up the hypothetical astronauts? Awesome.
Yep, we may not have learned anything from a successful booster catch, but hopefully we learn something from the starship failure. The result of learning is safety in this case.
So, this launch will make starship safer; not so much the booster. And that's good.
Maybe not the perfect outcome - but SpaceX test alot to expose flaws and learn from failures and weak points
Maybe not the more usual design method in aerospace industry
But still another great launch from Superheavy, and they are learning all the time and pushing boundaries!!!!
Pushing boundaries what? blowing shit up?
I'm honestly don't know. A pathfinder is perfectly fine. You want to get stuff out of the door to have a prove of concept. But when you are talking about an actual product, in this case getting tons of stuff into orbit, you want to slow down iteration and work on actually having a product.
So far we seem to have a heavy booster that can return to base and lift quite a nice payload up to 90km or so. Nice. But the second stage is no where near anything viable. First and foremost, it has no payload and no means to get any payload that is bigger then a floppy disk out of the ship. So as of now, Starship can't get anything anybody would pay for into Orbit. This is a huge problem! This is not a product!
We should never forget, the goal is not to land stuff on earth, the goal is to get huge payloads into orbit and beyond!
So, my question is... are we still in the pathfinder stage to figure out, how and if a second stage is possible?
@@spanke2999it's a research rocket not a commercial service yet right? Isn't HLS going to be completely different from a human rated starship from launch compared to the Orion docking
I mean who's even paid for a starship launch? The falcon heavy has 3 launches a year excluding starlink for starship? Who's the private non government customer?
@@TheCosmicGuy0111yeah, this flight was far from pushing boundaries. It was a big setback.
Dunno about the FTS; SpaceX will have that data. But StarShip would have been tumbling before it lost telemetry, so it's likely it would have disassembled itself violently once it got into thickish air.
That depends on how it was programmed, and whether the tanks were still pressurized to provide attitude control. And if that last engine was shut down.
If it had attitude control so it could keep itself shield first in the extreme upper atmosphere, it could have used its flaps in the high, mid and lower atmosphere to re-enter in a controlled manner.
@@robertbackhaus8911 Maybe not? With the last engine running being a Merlin Vacuum, it would have been a huge amount of offset thrust to make up, even for a short period, putting it into a vigorous tumble. That would likely have uncovered the propellant sumps and likely have caused severe damage to the engine(s) if they managed to shut down before blowing up.
Well heck!! The term "it isn't rocket science" is rooted in absolute truth, rocket science is bloody hard to get right all the time, and the brave men and women involved in its development are true heroes today, and in the past, particularly those who have lost their lives trying to push the boundaries of space exploration. Good luck to all in the future, and God speed!