this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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cross-posted from: https://feddit.it/post/15755274

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[–] [email protected] 233 points 1 month ago (17 children)

Title: SpaceX Has Finally Figured Out Why Starship Exploded, And The Reason Is Utterly Embarrassing

  • SpaceX's Starship experienced a catastrophic explosion during its seventh launch attempt, resulting from a failure in the fuel line due to vibrations.
  • The explosion occurred over the Turks and Caicos islands, leading to debris scattering over the area.
  • The fuel leak ignited two minutes after the upper stage's engines were ignited, overwhelming the rocket's venting capacity and compromising the engines.
  • A loss of communication with ground control occurred as the engines shut down, leading to the rocket's self-destruction sequence.
  • The incident highlights significant operational failures, as engine shutdowns should not cause communication loss, indicating a lack of redundancy in systems.
  • SpaceX's pre-flight checks failed to identify potential leaks, suggesting inadequate safety measures or poor execution of checks.
  • In contrast, NASA's Saturn V rocket had a flawless launch record over its operational lifespan, showcasing superior reliability compared to Starship.
  • Starship's design has been criticized for overestimating engine thrust capabilities, limiting its payload capacity to 40-50 tons, which is less than the Saturn V.
  • The cost per kilogram to launch with Starship is comparable to that of the Saturn V, undermining its intended economic advantages.
  • The overall failure of Starship raises concerns about the efficiency and safety of SpaceX's approach to space exploration, contrasting sharply with historical successes in the field.
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (11 children)

-The incident highlights significant operational failures, as engine shutdowns should not cause communication loss, indicating a lack of redundancy in systems.

  • SpaceX's pre-flight checks failed to identify potential leaks, suggesting inadequate safety measures or poor execution of checks.

These points are really silly. Two engines exploded causing the ship to tumble. I'm not sure what they think additional communications redundancy would help with at that point.

And how do you indefiy a fuel leak on the ground that hasn't happened yet? It was caused by vibrations at a resonant frequency that is only reached at a certain fuel level?

  • Starship's design has been criticized for overestimating engine thrust capabilities, limiting its payload capacity to 40-50 tons, which is less than the Saturn V.

Who said that? That's really silly. And isn't that payload with full reusability?

Space is hard, it's literally rocket science. The embarrassing thing is it failed in the same way twice. But finding these resonance issues that only pop up in specific fuel states, makes sense it's hard to pin down. I think they'll need to characterize their vib spectrum as fuel burns down, then analyze the harmonics of the hardware and make sure they don't couple. It isn't easy, but they should be able to.

Edit: thanks for the summary, I just disagree with the article.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Also starship hasn't started its operational lifespan. These are test articles still. They should absolutely be treating them with respect and due diligence since they are launching, but this is just highly public testing on a reusable rocket. Success not guaranteed and that's why they aren't flying real payloads (even of their own).

Also, pretty sure Apollo 1 was a great example of Saturn rockets not being flawless.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

What does Apollo 1 have to do with the reliability of the Saturn rockets…?

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