totm nov 2023 SpaceX Discussion Thread

[mikegarrison]

I'm surprised they didn't reshow the flight. Is there a way to watch a replay?

[cubinator]

1 minute ago, StrandedonEarth said:

I think it shutdown earlier than expected 

The velocity they were reporting was 6700 m/s, how close is that to the final velocity?

[Elthy]

Wow, those 33 engines firing together are beautiful.

A friend of mine tried to watch it on Youtube and found an "official" stream, he only became suspicios as Elon Musk tried to sell him cryptocurrency. At that point the real lanuch was already over...

[Hotel26]

I can't remember the last time I lost BOTH stages...  Uh, RSS, OK...

Edited November 18, 2023 by Hotel26

[Scotius]

For a second test flight, it was amazing.

Now it's time to analyze what went right, and what went wrong.

And lastly, third time's the charm!

[Codraroll]

Now I want to see pictures of the launch pad. Hope it survived better than last time. The fact that all engines lit up indicates that there wasn't too much of a carnage there, at least.

[StrandedonEarth]

Just now, Codraroll said:

Now I want to see pictures of the launch pad. Hope it survived better than last time. The fact that all engines lit up indicates that there wasn't too much of a carnage there, at least.

Gotta admit, with all engines healthy it moved off the pad and accelerated up much quicker than the first one.

[Codraroll]

Just now, StrandedonEarth said:

Gotta admit, with all engines healthy it moved off the pad and accelerated up much quicker than the first one.

Yeah, things seem to have played out a lot smoother than the last time. But it would be nice to see confirmation.

[Space_Coyote]

omg, omg, OMG, OMMMMMGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT FREAKING WORKS!!!!!!! YES YES YES1!!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

 

It Got  farther then the last time.. 6minutes before both FTS systems did a RUD. but then got it into space.. 149 km !!!!

 

One Further step for man kind.

 

You did a dam n good job SpaceX.

 

[tater]

1 minute ago, mikegarrison said:

That seems like a pretty serious issue -- at that point in the profile shouldn't the FTS be safed?

on last night's F9 launch both FTS safed after entry burn, ~6:40

[AckSed]

6 minutes ago, Codraroll said:

Now I want to see pictures of the launch pad. Hope it survived better than last time. The fact that all engines lit up indicates that there wasn't too much of a carnage there, at least.

I saw NSF's shot of the OLM post-launch. It looked completely fine, but we'd need to see the ground.

Edit: NSF's pad stream shows no debris, no chaos, looks pristine. Stage 0 upgrades seem to have worked.

Edited November 18, 2023 by AckSed

[Geonovast]

Oh man, I am so happy.  So glad I got up early for this.  I haven't laughed at a launch since Astra's Space-Y launch. 

[Spaceception]

That was incredible to watch, and it looks like they mostly, or even entirely, ironed out the Raptor reliability issues, save for maybe edge cases. I was expecting at least a handful of engines to go out throughout the launch, like one of the Vacuum engines, but they all stayed lit, which is great!

With this flight, I feel quite comfortable in saying IFT-3 is going all the way. We got good ascent, hot staging worked - even though it might've been too hard on the booster - and the ship made it to space, either making it to SECO, or just short of it. I think the next test has a good shot at completing the planned trajectory and goals.

[Brotoro]

Still too much debris flying out from launch pad area. Much less than first flight.

[sevenperforce]

I’m guessing one of two possibilities on the first stage rapid unscheduled disassembly. The obvious is that hot staging is a nasty affair and the upper bulkhead simply couldn’t take the heat. That would make sense. Another possibility is that the slosh during that very energetic booster flip was significantly more chaotic than expected and they had engine starvation problems. The graphic depicting which engines were firing may have supported this, as most of the engines on one side lit successfully, while the ones on the other side did not. 

The apparent loss of the second stage is much more mysterious and doesn’t seem to have any immediate explanation. I think someone up thread mentioned a possible, autogenous pressurization failure, and that seems like a reasonable possibility, especially if damage sustained during hot staging punctured the tanks somewhere and caused a slow leak that auto press simply couldn’t overcome at the end of the burn when the tanks were mostly empty. Regardless, good job and congrats to everyone. 

[Shpaget]

Booster disassembled itself just as the engines turned off.

There was a bit of a lack of symmetry in regards to which engines were firing at boostback, but the orientation looked roughly ok-ish. I wonder if those things are related

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

@Gargamel  -- Thanks for getting me back on the forums in time for this!

 

 

[SunlitZelkova]

Lol I didn’t realize it was so early in the morning. I happened to be up but was watching A Million Miles Away on Amazon Prime. I’ll catch a replay later.

My guess after hearing about a second RUD is this will end up like the N1: four flights with various different levels of success, but still failing, and a totally successful fifth flight (which the N1 never got to unfortunately).

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

4 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

So glad I got up early for this. 

I barely woke up in time.  My alarm went off, and I automatically snoozed it.  Then my brain said, "Why is there an alarm going off on Saturday?"...

Oh Crap!

Jumped up and got to the TV just in time to see the candle light - and 

wow

[tater]

4 minutes ago, Brotoro said:

Still too much debris flying out from launch pad area. Much less than first flight.

Looks like dust from when the blast got past the deluge. Rewatched the 4 NSF cameras, and the only large pieces I could see turned out to be that black plastic tarp on the chainlink. Fingers crossed

[Brotoro]

First stage kept all engines running during boost, and second stage fired and burned quite a while… so it has already surpassed the N-1

[tater]

FTS worked at least

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

If I could have recorded my wife and son's running commentary on my excitement (and running commentary) about the launch...

You would all be amused. 

Apparently, my hair was every bit as entertaining as my nerd-citement.

 

[AckSed]

Honestly, I was too damn anxious to register that it was flying so well until the booster had indeed kept up its full burn.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Just now, tater said:

FTS worked at least

and impressively

First stage BOOM left no doubt about the FTS - and from the puff at the end guessing SS disassembled as designed.