Big Flying Rockets: Space Launches V

[Zorral]

Wonder who is going to clean up the utter mess this made of the city of Port Isabel, because jerkwaddy wouldn't wait a few more weeks, and who will pay for that.  Not to mention many other negative environmental impacts.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Zorral

[SpaceChampion]

Possibly bad news regarding the Japanese lunar lander.   This is not a mission of the Japanese space agency, but one of the legacy Japanese teams that competed in the Google Lunar X-Prize.  This would be the 2nd X-Prize team to make it to the lunar surface.

Edited April 25, 2023 by SpaceChampion

[polishgenius]

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/spacex-starship-explosion-spread-particulate-matter-for-miles.html

Just, like... fuck these fuckers. 

[DireWolfSpirit]

Extraordinary pic of Earth from behind the moon, I dont think ive ever seen it captured from this angle.

 

[Zorral]

.... As a result of the explosion, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded the company’s Starship Super Heavy launch program pending results of a “mishap investigation,” part of standard practice, according to an email from the agency sent to CNBC after the launch. No injuries or public property damage had yet been reported to the agency as of Friday. .....

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/24/spacex-starship-explosion-spread-particulate-matter-for-miles.html

Quote

 

.... SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, speaking publicly on Twitter Spaces on April 16 ahead of the test flight, acknowledged that a vehicle with 33 engines is akin to “a box of grenades,” and that the Starship vehicle was not likely to reach orbit but was likely to explode.

However, Musk and SpaceX did not accurately predict that their launchpad would be destroyed, nor that particulate matter would rain down on residents and habitat as far away as Port Isabel, a town about six miles from the launchpad, and South Padre Island, a few miles up the coast from the site.

Images captured during the test flight show that the SpaceX launch pad also exploded, with concrete chunks from it flying in multiple directions leaving behind a giant crater underneath. According to Dave Cortez, the Lone Star chapter director for the Sierra Club, a 501c4 environmental advocacy group, “Concrete shot out into the ocean, and risked hitting the fuel storage tanks which are these silos adjacent to the launch pad.” 

Jared Margolis, senior attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said that in an environmental assessment – which SpaceX completed to obtain a launch license – the company told the FAA and other agencies that in the event of an “anomaly” they expected debris would fall within a limited, 700-acre area surrounding the launch site. 

That would translate to a one-square-mile debris field, with debris emanating about three-quarters of a mile away from the site, he said, referencing SpaceX environmental site assessment documents that are public record.

In reality, following the test flight and explosion, people in Port Isabel reported broken windows in their businesses, shaking windows at their homes, and dust and particulate matter that coated their homes, schools and land unexpectedly, according to Cortez.

Port Isabel is a mainland town near the SpaceX spaceport, and across from the South Padre Island offshore, which also got a share of particulate matter, according to correspondence between researchers and residents shared with CNBC.

It’s not yet known whether the ash- and sand-like particulate matter is dangerous to touch or breathe in and what effect it could have on soil health, Cortez and Margolis both noted.

One industry chronicler who reported locally on the launch, Lavie Ohana, wrote that the launch was also “one of the loudest” she had ever witnessed, “with shockwaves that just felt like getting punched over and over and over.” ....

.... The impacts of particulate emissions from the SpaceX launch won’t be understood until samples are evaluated and the debris field measured comprehensively.

But in general, particulate emissions are regulated under the federal Clean Air Act and Texas state law. 

Eric Roesch, an environmental engineer who has been tracking the impact of SpaceX facilities and launches on his blog, ESGHound, said that particulate emissions are associated with pulmonary and respiratory issues, and are considered a high priority pollutant by the EPA. Health impacts depend upon exposure time and quantity, as well as particle size, and contents of the particulate, he added.

Roesch has been warning the public for months that the FAA and SpaceX had not been careful enough in their environmental analysis to comfortably proceed with a launch of this magnitude. He said, “The possibility of a widely dispersed plume of emissions was not disclosed by the FAA or SpaceX, during the initial environmental permitting and approval process.” 

Margolis and Cortez both noted that roads had been damaged, with gates and cordons closed immediately following the SpaceX Starship test flight. That meant wildlife biologists and other field researchers could not immediately pass through to study the full scale of any damage that occurred in a nearby wildlife refuge area – though some were reportedly on location by Saturday April 22.  ....

 

 

[Erik of Hazelfield]

That’s very unfortunate. I’m not a fan of Elon Musk anymore, but I do think the mission of SpaceX is an inspiring one. The question is if the usual modus operandi of SpaceX (trial and error) is really compatible with rockets of this size. It’s certainly a failure to misjudge the blast impact the way they did (unless you take the more sinister interpretation that they knew about the risks and lied about them).

I guess this will delay further testing by a long time. 

[Zorral]

7 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

they knew about the risks

They did, they most certainly knew, as the reportage tells us over and over.  He overruled.  And didn't even bother lying about it.

[SpaceChampion]

 

[Kalbear]

Oof. The SpaceX rocket took 40 seconds to respond to self-destruct command, which...is not a very awesome thing to hear when you're talking about a fairly potent missile that was going off course!

https://gizmodo.com/spacex-struggled-to-destroy-its-failing-starship-rocket-1850390877

Quote

 

With all things considered, even a slight 40 second delay to a self-destruct command is a big deal when dealing with a new megarocket on an experimental flight. The 394-foot-tall rocket was nearly 40 miles (64 kilometers) above the Gulf of Mexico when it exploded, having departed from the Boca Chica launch facility some four minutes earlier.

Had the self-destruct sequence not worked at all, the rocket would’ve likely fallen into the ocean. But what would have happened had the rocket, in the seconds following launch, veered toward nearby populated areas? It’s scary to think about, and something the Federal Aviation Administration will want to look into.

 

 

[polishgenius]

Absolute bozos. Everything we're seeing suggests that this test was so botched on every level of safety that I can't see how they can possibly be allowed to continue trying while Musk has any decision-making capacity in the project. Safety should be the first thing considered when doing these things, and it seems to have been an afterthought. 

[SpaceChampion]

SpaceX is remarkably transparent in most things it does, unlike most other companies in the industry, and they put a lot of work into safety.

The test went well.  No one died or was harmed.  Nothing not owned by SpaceX was damaged.  None of the particulate matter fallen is toxic, it's just sand and concrete dust.  That's what risk assessment is for -- not for things to go perfectly, but to assess if harm would result. 

Musk did a "twitter spaces" audio call to talk about it (stole this from reddit):

Quote

• Musk: "The outcome was roughly in what I expected, and maybe slightly exceeding my expectations, but roughly what I expected, which is that we would get clear of the pad."

• Musk: "I'm glad to report that the pad damage is actually quite small" and should "be repaired quickly."

• Musk: "The vehicle's structural margins appear to be better than we expected, as we can tell from the vehicle actually doing somersaults towards the end and still staying intact."

• Musk: From a "pad standpoint, we are probably ready to launch in 6 to 8 weeks.'

• "The longest item on that is probably re-qualification of the flight termination system ... it took way too long to rupture the tanks."

• Musk: Time for AFTS to kick in "was pretty long," about "40 seconds-ish."

• Musk: "There were 3 engines that we chose not to start," so that's why Super Heavy booster lifted off with 30 engines, "which is the minimum number of engines."

• The 3 engines "didn't explode," but just were not "healthy enough to bring them to full thrust so they were shut down"

• Musk: At T+27 seconds, SpaceX lost communications [to one engine] due to "some kind of energy event." And "some kind of explosion happened to knock out the heat shields of engines 17, 18, 19, or 20."

• Musk: "Rocket kept going through T+62 seconds" with the engines continuing to run. Lost thrust vector control at T+85 seconds.

• Musk: Generated a "rock tornado" under Super Heavy during liftoff, but SpaceX does not "see evidence that the rock tornado actually damaged engines or heat shields in a material way." May have happened, but "we have not seen evidence of that."

• Musk: "It was actually good to get this vehicle off the ground because we've made so many improvements" in Super Heavy Booster 9 "and beyond."

• "Really just needed to fly this vehicle and then move on to the much improved booster."

• Musk: After AFTS, "the ship did not attempt to save itself."

• Musk: Big thing for next Starship launch is "insuring that we don't lose thrust vector control" with Booster 9."

• Musk: "We're going to putting down a lot of steel" under the launch tower before the next Starship flight.

• "Debris was really just basically sand and rock so it's not toxic at all ... it's just like a sandstorm, essentially ... but we don't want to do that again."

• Musk: "We certainly didn't expect" to destroy the concrete under the launchpad.

• Musk: Speculating, but "one of the more plausible explanations is that ... we may have compressed the sand underneath the concrete to such a degree that the concrete effectively bent and then cracked," which is "a leading theory."

• Musk: Reason for going with a steel plate instead of a flame trench is that for payloads in the rocket, the worse acoustic environment doesn't matter to the payload since it's about 400 feet away.

• Musk: Flight was "pretty close to what I expected."

• Musk: "Got pretty close to stage separation ... if we had maintained thrust vector control and throttled up, which we should have ... then we would have made it to staging."

• Musk: "Our goal for the next flight is to make it to staging and hopefully succeed."

• Musk: "My expectation for the next flight would be to reach orbit." Next flight profile will be a "repeat."

• Musk: "The goal of these missions is just information. Like, we don't have any payload or anything -- it's just to learning as much as possible."

• Musk: "Definitely don't" expect lunar Starship (under the HLS project) to be the longest lead item for the Artemis III mission.

• "We will be the first thing to really be" ready.

• Musk: Probably an 80% probability of reaching orbit with Starship this year, and "I think close to 100% change of reaching orbit within 12 months."

• Musk: Slowed down Raptor engine production "because we've got more Raptors than we know what to do with."

• Musk: Expect to spend ~$2 billion this year on Starship.

• Musk: "We do not anticipate needing to raise funding ... we don't think we need to raise funding." Will do the "standard thing where we provide liquidity to employees."

• "But to my knowledge we do not need to raise incremental funding for SpaceX."

• Musk: For the next flight, "we're going to start the engines faster and get off the pad faster." From engine start to moving Starship "was around 5 seconds, which is a really long time to be blasting the pad." Going to try to cut that time in half.

• Musk: Starship didn't get to what SpaceX thought was "a safe point to do stage separation."

• Musk: "I thought the SpaceX team did amazing work."

• "This is certainly a candidate for the hardest technical problem done by humans."

• Musk, on environmental response: "The rocket uses non-toxic propellants and ... scattered a lot of dust, but to the best of our knowledge there has not been any meaningful damage to the environment that we're aware of."

• Musk: SpaceX has yet to make a final decision on which Starship prototype and Super Heavy booster will fly the next launch.

• Musk: "Going to be replacing a bunch of the tanks in the tank farm, but these are tanks that we wanted to replace anyway."

• Musk: "Tower itself is in good shape. We see no meaningful damage to the tower even though they got hit with some pretty big chunks of concrete."

• Musk: Starship sliding laterally off the launchpad was "because of the engine failures."

• Musk is signing off, and says he plans to do another Starship update in "3 weeks-ish"

 

 

[Zorral]

29 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

The test went well.  No one died or was harmed. 

Who is paying for the massive mess that needs to be cleaned up where people's homes are, whose homes are inundated in the mess?  Who is cleaning up the massive environmental mess that is killing the fish, animals and vegetation?  Who is apologizing?

[SpaceChampion]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Who is paying for the massive mess that needs to be cleaned up where people's homes are, whose homes are inundated in the mess?  Who is cleaning up the massive environmental mess that is killing the fish, animals and vegetation?  Who is apologizing?

https://spacenews.com/fish-and-wildlife-service-documents-damage-from-starship-launch/

Quote

There was no evidence, though, that the launch and debris it created harmed wildlife. “At this time, no dead birds or wildlife have been found on refuge-owned or managed lands,” the agency said.

 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, SpaceChampion said:

SpaceX is remarkably transparent in most things it does, unlike most other companies in the industry, and they put a lot of work into safety.

The test went well.  No one died or was harmed.  Nothing not owned by SpaceX was damaged.  None of the particulate matter fallen is toxic, it's just sand and concrete dust.  That's what risk assessment is for -- not for things to go perfectly, but to assess if harm would result. 

Musk did a "twitter spaces" audio call to talk about it (stole this from reddit):

 

I'm not sure I would take Musk at his word at anything, but especially not this. The launch pad was significantly damaged and predictably so, as an example. 40 seconds to take a termination signal is not a good sign and underplaying any negatives is a very common tactic of his. Causing people to inhale concrete dust is not technically toxic in the sense that it'll actually poison you, but it absolutely causes disease and issues. I mean, I don't blame him - he's doing PR and wants to spin things - but the notion that he is being remarkably transparent here is not actually borne out by facts.

[The Anti-Targ]

It was only a successful launch if they learned something from the failures that they couldn't have learned via simulations and better development.

A good simulation probably could have predicted the damage to the launch pad, for instance.

[Zorral]

In the wake of a SpaceX explosion that coated coastal Texas in ash, environmental organizations on Monday filed a federal lawsuit intended to safeguard local wildlife from more "exploding rockets" and ensure residents' access to regional beaches and parks.

Long read.

https://www.rawstory.com/elon-musk-texas/

This carelessly caused explosion has been an unmitigated disaster for everyone and everything that lives -- or used to live -- in the region where it happened.

[SpaceChampion]

9 minutes ago, Zorral said:

This carelessly caused explosion has been an unmitigated disaster for everyone and everything that lives -- or used to live -- in the region where it happened.

They're suing the FAA, not SpaceX.  After every launch no matter what happens environmental groups sue.  I assume their lawyers are making bank.  You can characterize it as a disaster but that doesn't touch reality.

As I quoted above and you decided to ignore the words the Fish & Wildlife Service itself:
 

Quote

There was no evidence, though, that the launch and debris it created harmed wildlife. “At this time, no dead birds or wildlife have been found on refuge-owned or managed lands,” the agency said.

 

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, SpaceChampion said:

They're suing the FAA, not SpaceX.  After every launch no matter what happens environmental groups sue.  I assume their lawyers are making bank.  You can characterize it as a disaster but that doesn't touch reality.

As I quoted above and you decided to ignore the words the Fish & Wildlife Service itself:
 

 

The claim is not that it killed anything right away; the claim and worry is that it will have bad health effects for animals in the region and has potentially ruined or harmed their environments.

Which is kind of a big deal too!

[polishgenius]

 

 

1 hour ago, SpaceChampion said:

As I quoted above and you decided to ignore the words the Fish & Wildlife Service itself:

 

“At this time, no dead birds or wildlife have been found on refuge-owned or managed lands,” is an insanely narrow definition to hang the claim there was no harm done on. Hell, it doesn't mean that nothing immediately died, just that they haven't found it. And then what Kal says, about the long-term damage and disruption. 

 

 

Edited May 2, 2023 by polishgenius

[SpaceChampion]

18 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

“At this time, no dead birds or wildlife have been found on refuge-owned or managed lands,” is an insanely narrow definition to hang the claim there was no harm done on. Hell, it doesn't mean that nothing immediately died, just that they haven't found it. And then what Kal says, about the long-term damage and disruption.

You're making a claim there is mysterious, unknown damage that you're hanging an extensive freak-out on.

Now they know more about the dynamics of launching Starship, they're taking a number of steps to prevent that same pad damage from re-occuring.  Which is exactly learning from a test launch is for.

Edited May 2, 2023 by SpaceChampion