RCgothic

Bottom lines: Even if Raptor V3 can't operate reliably at 350bar chamber pressure, it'll operate at 300bar far more reliably than Raptor 2. Even if SpaceX can't get full reuse to work, the disposable elements of a Starship would only be a few million more per launch than an F9 upper stage plus fairings. It'll be cheaper per kg by at least a factor of 2, guaranteed, and they don't even have to drop prices because SpaceX have already captured 90% of the market at their current prices. And if they can get full and rapid reuse to work, they win full stop. Private capital never has to be amortised. As long as the interest payments are affordable and there's always someone willing to lend when the old loans come due, development costs are irrelevant. The owner's behaviour could be where SpaceX comes unstuck and it's hard not to be aware of his latest escapades, but discussing the details of those is against forum rules, so. Gwynne Shotwell has always run a tight ship and there's no reason yet to think that won't continue. Kathy Leuders' hiring to run Starbase is a good sign IMO.

Raptor was already the record holder, so yes. 350bar completely blows away the 2nd placed RD-180 (267bar).

Wow! That's seriously impressive. Officially more powerful than BE-4. Edit: A little caveat, it wasn't expected to survive that. And yet it did. And also Raptor V3 may be even cleaner than V2. Still uses a throat film cooling manifold though:

Ariane 6 was defined at concept level in 2012 about a year before Falcon 9 v1.1 had its first flight, and they faffed about a bit before settling on its final layout in 2014 about a year after F9 v1.1. Arianespace knew at the time they had to cut costs in half, and even so planned to launch two sats for every 1 on Falcon 9, and use their better 2nd stage for precise orbital insertions with engine relights. Times have moved on. Falcon 9 now has more payload total than Ariane 6 even without counting Falcon Heavy. It is regularly reused, can fly for under $20m internal cost, has an accurate restartable 2nd stage, and holds the record for most payloads deployed at once. And have Arianespace responded to that at all? No. Their Ariane 6 design hasn't moved with F9's developing capabilities and is now a full decade behind the times. The only thing worse for them than choosing this design would be sticking with Ariane 5.

Short of putting the launch site at the tip of Florida in Southern Glades Wildlife & Environmental area, there's basically no eastern seafront that isn't densely populated. Boca Chica was an ideal location and it's frankly miraculous they got a site as good as they did.

Wow:

It's Thrust Vector Control as @SunlitZelkovasuggested.

Read the whole of this thread: 3 engines out at Liftoff was intentional. Explosion at t+28 wasn't. Loss of comms. Loss of TVC leading to loss of control. FTS took too long to function, needs requalification. Didn't expect to destroy pad. Would have made it through staging with TVC operational. Next flight will be a repeat profile with no payload.

Press X to doubt.

I believe B9/S27 are next up, but given likely delays for launch pad reconstruction and upgrades it could easily end up being later prototypes. We know both are advances on B7/S24. If they were to skip B9/S27 it would probably be to the next block upgrade, but not sure whether that would be B10/S28 or later.

Mechzilla has similar capacity to the LR11350 (1350t) crane that installed the OLM table. It's very unlikely that even an LR13000 (1600t) crane could lift it down intact. It's had a lot of mass added to it since it was installed.

Two structural engineers on Twitter informed me this structure would act like a boat rising and falling on the tide of the water table. It'd make the whole launch pad super unstable. They can't do that. It took one of the largest mobile cranes in the world to lift the OLM deck up there and they've added too much mass to it since then.

New pad for SX at Vandenberg.

If it had only been about the vehicle, then I'm sure I'd be satisfied that objectives were met and data retrieved despite the lackluster performance in flight. It was spectacular to watch, and actually a bit impressive it kept flying as long as it did with so many failures. But it's hard to be happy about trashing the launch site to such a degree. If it turns out they have to rebuild the OLM, that's a catastrophe. It can't be lifted down in its assembled state. I don't necessarily buy into it being stupid to commit to launch after the pad began to disintegrate (which could only have been detected by engine failures). If the pad is dead from shrapnel and the vehicle is damaged and can't be detanked and it's sitting on there filled with propellant, that's only going to have a worse outcome.

The DV needed to establish orbit would drop from about 9.3km/s including of gravity and aero losses of ascent to the pure 7.8km/s required to maintain orbit. So in DV terms it's not much. However, as others have stated you could get away with much smaller engines. Taken to extremes, you barely need any thrust. Stick the highest ISP/low thrust ion thruster you can find on your ship and you'll get to orbital velocity eventually. Structural margins and dry mass would be enormously reduced. The rocket would be a lot smaller.

I'm hearing Clamps were hydraulic release. Makes sense. Edit: that's what I guess for not releasing before posting.

We were briefed an 8s engine ignition and hold down release period, and that's about what we got. It did look slower than it could have been after release, but not sure if that's an illusion caused by it being so big. With TWR =1.5 it should jump off the pad. It wasn't at full thrust and had some engines out.

Seems like an internal leak of a still from a starship flap cam. Nobody's owning up.

It's not just concrete under the pad. It's refractory heat-resistant concrete. And it got excavated like so much sand. They need a serious redesign. Yes. The ship was FTS'd a few moments after the booster and survived the initial deflagration. What you're seeing here is the ship with the top of the booster still attached with the deflagration/spill of booster LOX/Methane blown out into clouds behind it.

Surreal image. After Booster FTS, moments before Starship FTS. Downward facing flap cam.

There's some speculation that with some loss of TVC (the HPUs exploded), together with being lower in the atmosphere and the centre of mass moving forward, that the centre of mass moved forward of the aerodynamic centre, initiating tumbling. That it happened approximately when MECO should have been was coincidence - the engines need to burn longer to correct the low trajectory. Also correcting the trajectory would have required flying at an AoA, exacerbating the assignments instability. Or if could have been the stage sep flip.