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14 hours ago, CatastrophicFailure said:

This. The system worked. The rules worked. The existing regulations worked
However, just add a bit more mud...

now, “RUD” to me sounds like it wasn’t deliberately terminated...

grimes in a rather strange outfit standing before BN1 in the high bay. 

"Unscheduled" presumably means just that.  It wasn't on the flight plan, but happened when it veered off course and the range officer (human or software) pushed the big red button and the rapid disassembly happened.

I suspect you also have to push it early enough that the debris falls in the allowed area.

31 minutes ago, KSK said:

I wish NSF wouldn’t anthropomorphise the Starships and Superheavies.

Everyone knows they hate it.

Sorry.  All sufficiently large vehicles are  anthropomorphized.  Probably predates Homer.

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1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

The foreshortening in that photo is extreme. The booster looks less the size of BN1 and more like the size of Falcon 9. But shiny.

Yeah, my own pics of F9 at Hawthorne very much have the same effect.

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35 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

wonder what happened to that engine to have it explode like that.

Spark plugs didn’t spark right away, resulting in an *extremely* hard start?

E: yes I’m serious, so don’t call me Shirley 

Edited by StrandedonEarth
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1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

But that's just a theory, a game Starship theory...

In all seriousness, that sounds plausible. I wonder what happened to that engine to have it explode like that.

We saw that engine on fire during ascent, with the primary burn area around the turbopump outlet to the cold fuel manifold (A in the image below). That is the single highest-pressure point in the entire engine. Setting aside the cause of that fire -- if the burn weakened the main fuel valve, then it could have failed during engine spin-up. Because helium is used to spin up the turbine, the upper impeller would have already had quite a bit of inertia and a sudden failure at the valve would have caused it to rip itself apart, sending a shockwave and shrapnel straight up the liquid methane feed line (B in the image below) and into the methane downcomer.

Fragging the methane downcomer would have introduced GOX into the methane line, and with shrapnel flying, the immediate detonation wave would have traveled straight up the downcomer and popped the methane header around its circumferential seam like a balloon.

failure-tree.jpg

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Wait...that "theory" posted to twitter above...so it yawed 180*? It only mentions "rotated 180* laterally". What reference frame are we in? Is  it a rotation about the "lateral axis" or is it a lateral rotation. Some people on other boards have claimed it was tail heavy.

Edited by Meecrob
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I think it's obvious we are seeing one of the downsides to SpaceX's relentless "build them, fly them, break them" idea. When you have so many in the pipeline at once, you don't have the time to find and fix problems before you try to fly the next one.

SpaceX had to pull the plug on their production line and do a hard reboot, which is why they scrapped SN 12-14 (do I have those numbers correct?). So *maybe* this SN15 has the problems fixed, but if, for instance, they found a new problem with this most recent flight, they surely did not have time to fix it for the one that is sitting out on the pad now.

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7 hours ago, mikegarrison said:

I think it's obvious we are seeing one of the downsides to SpaceX's relentless "build them, fly them, break them" idea.

Artillery method, beloved by Korolev's team. Just SpX's V-2 is bigger.

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