Space In General

Having a beer last night on our balcony overlooking Kite Beach, Cabarete on the north shore of the Dominican Republic. See something in the sky in the north west. A couple of minutes later it's streaking across the twilight sky in front of us. Quite an impressive sight.



SpaceX rocket launched from Cape Canaveral seen from Kite Beach Cabarete.jpg
 
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Touring Mars
Stunning new image of Uranus

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What a stunner. Can we just name that one pluto? That's two birds with one stone. We'd get pluto back in the solar system, which everyone wants, and we can stop giggling about the name of what is clearly the 2nd (or 3rd depending on taste) most beautiful planet in the solar system.
 
Danoff
What a stunner. Can we just name that one pluto? That's two birds with one stone. We'd get pluto back in the solar system, which everyone wants, and we can stop giggling about the name of what is clearly the 2nd (or 3rd depending on taste) most beautiful planet in the solar system.
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Is Uranus really that bad? I've always thought of it as an awesome sounding name. Good enough to look past the joke. If we did change the name, we could use the alternate spelling Ouranos, which is completely immune to puns. Completely.

Anyway, out of all the possible future missions in the solar system, probing the ice giants is on the top of my list. We need live (+4 hour light delay) feed from inside Neptune.
 
Exorcet
Is Uranus really that bad? I've always thought of it as an awesome sounding name. Good enough to look past the joke. If we did change the name, we could use the alternate spelling Ouranos, which is completely immune to puns. Completely.

Anyway, out of all the possible future missions in the solar system, probing the ice giants is on the top of my list. We need live (+4 hour light delay) feed from inside Neptune.
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What about probing Uranus? You don't want a live feed from inside Uranus?

Q.E.D.
 
420 here we go :D I mean it was kinda obvious that Elon will go for it when it was clear that yesterdays attempt will be a scrub.


 
Well, it launched, went into a bit of a spiral after a couple of minutes, and they blew it up. Rest in pieces...
Announcer said several times that 5 engines had flamed out. It looked to get through Max-Q OK.
 
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Launched a lot of debris at the cameras and cars that surrounded the launch pad. Can't wait for the pics and vids. =)

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5 or 6 out of 32 engines flamed out.
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Rocket lost control at 35 km approximately and started to tumble. It's at the moment when it was supposed to separate. Looks like the booster continued its programming but the stuck ship threw it out of balance and the system eventually self-distructed.

As on of the commentators said- "The most Kerbal launch I have ever seen" xD
 
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Aftermath of the launch:



Source:






One pilot mentioned 2.5 years ago that their launch pad wouldn't be capable of withstanding the blast




An ESG researcher made a blog post days earlier warning about the dangers as well

blog.esghound.com

SpaceX's Texas Rocket is Going To Cause A Lot More Damage Than Anyone Thinks

On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a license for SpaceX to launch the first orbital test of Starship, the largest rocket in human history, as soon as this Monday, April 17th. I predict this will be a foolish and reckless decision, and impacts from even a nominal launch could...
blog.esghound.com blog.esghound.com

They point out two things:

One, the data used to get approval was based on old data that does not fully represent the new capabilities of the new rocket

In May of last year, I demonstrated that SpaceX used modeling data from early 2019 to seek approval for the launches; at that time in Starship’s development, the megarocket’s total thrust was estimated at 61.8 meganewtons (MN). Today, the rocket that sits on a pad in Boca Chica, Texas is rated at 74 MN, a 20% increase in size.

[...]

Further compounding the issue is that the February static test fire of Starship Superheavy’s 33 engines was done at just 50% of total thrust. A full-throttle test would have produced a significantly larger noise impact.

[...]

These noise surveys and other factors, such as sonic boom intensity and heat plume that provide the basis for FAA’s rushed approval for SpaceX’s launch facility are all based on the smaller 2019 design version of Starship. These inputs provide the basis for all impacts measured in the NEPA document, meaning that the resulting damage to the community and the environment predicted are certainly understated, inadequate, and inaccurate.

[...]

SpaceX and FAA refused to update their models when pressed by the FWS during a review of operations’ impact on endangered species in February of last year, when the Service pointed out that the company had drastically increased engine sizing, stating that these same models used for approval under the Endangered Species Act were adequate.

[...]

The company narrowly received authorization to “take” (e.g., legal term for kill, maim or displace) birds residing in dozens of acres of surrounding habitat from the FWS under an Endangered Species Act review4. But this study was, again, predicated on 2019 models that are already showing to be inadequate and inaccurate. An expanded radius for the noise bomb to occur upon launch could kill hundreds of additional wildlife, to an extent neither predicted nor disclosed to the public.
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Two, the launch facility is not adequate for launching any large rocket

SpaceX convinced FAA to approve a site that would host launching the Largest Rocket in History under NEPA’s Environmental Assessment (EA) process, which is saved for projects that do not have a “significant impact” to the environment. This action was and is eyebrow-raising, as no major spaceport has ever been authorized under this process, always requiring a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). An EIS is the default multi-year approval process specified under NEPA. The FAA piggybacked on an existing 2015 authorization for SpaceX’s operation of 2-3 annual launches of the much smaller Falcon 9 rockets to forward this streamlined Starship “low impact” approval process through the system.

[...]

Here in Texas, SpaceX’s launch tower sits 500 feet away from the protected habitat owned by either the Fish And Wildlife Service or Texas Parks and Wildlife. All of the surrounding land, however, is considered protected wildlife habitat under the Endangered Species Act.

In addition to the siting and sizing of the pad, SpaceX does not have a flame trench, nor do they have a water deluge system used to suppress heat and sound energy from any launches, as the Army Corps of Engineering permitting required to add these civil engineering systems is itself a multi-year process.

No large rocket complex on the planet: not in Russia, nor China, and certainly not in the US, exists that doesn’t contain one or both of these energy suppression systems.

These mechanisms exist to protect the rocket itself and nearby support infrastructure. They also minimize shock waves and sound energy impacts on the surrounding environment. The fact that these protections are the default, and have been so for decades, even in countries with lesser environmental and safety regulations, is quite telling.

[...]

The heat plume expected from launch would instantly kill any animal unfortunate enough to be caught in its wake. Though SpaceX did admit to this fact, several wildlife biologists I spoke with were stunned at some of the language used in FAA’s justification for minimizing modeled casualties. Lines such as: “Noise from the Raptor engines would cause a startle response of animals and would effectively direct them away from the area and reduce the risk of being affected by the heat of the plume” appear to serve more as handwaving away actual impacts rather than discuss them in a serious manner.
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"The Super Heavy is capable of generating 16.7 million pounds of thrust (7,590 tonnes of force), more than twice that of the Saturn V's first stage, nearly 8 million pounds more than the Artemis I SLS and 6.5 million pounds over that of the former Soviet Union's N-1 moon rocket, which failed on each of its four launches ..."



 
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I'm sure the flight was fine, but the rocket obliterated the launch pad and almost certainly caused critical damage to itself - which is probably why the engines were flaming out - as well as a significant amount of other damage on the ground, and it looked like they pressed the Oh **** button way, way too late with the craft tumbling under 100000ft (having already rotated twice) and raining yet more debris down. Yeah, the F14 and F16 maiden flights might have gone bad but they didn't destroy the airfield behind them...


Serious re-examination needed of the facility - including what passes for a safety perimeter; they mangled someone's car and the tank farm got banged up pretty badly too - rather than rushing to another launch in three months because Elon Said So. Although rumour has it there's a specialist Musk-handling team at SpaceX to keep his worst ideas away from reality.
 
EngieDiesel
Meanwhile, Hyundai is designing a moon rover. They join Toyota who are designing a moon truck because they have more money then they know what to do with, and Nissan who has designed a rover of their own too.

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Hyundai rover concept

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Nissan rover prototype

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Toyota Lunar Cruiser concept (Kaz put it in GT7 plzthnxbai)
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NASCAR of all entities has also thrown their hat into the ring by partnering with Leidos. Would love to see it happen just to see the reaction.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.na...eidos-nascar-speed-into-lunar-rover-race/amp/
 
I went to see the launch of a Space-X Falcon 9 in the wee hours of the morning last December 11. It was spectacular! Absolutely clear sky, we saw it all the way to staging, and could follow the second stage for nearly 10 minutes more. From the ground we saw the boost-back and re-entry burns, as well as the landing at the cape, and of course the sonic boom!

The launch was the Japanese Hakuto-R Mission 1, which was to be an attempt at the first landing on the moon by a private company. Unfortunately, it appears the landing has failed. They lost communication from the lander pretty much exactly when it should have touched down. It is assumed they have lost the mission.
 
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Per standard procedure for all mishap investigations, the FAA has grounded all future Starship launch attempts for the immediate future.

SpaceX was unable to get Starship, said to be the world's most powerful rocket, into orbit during that experiment. The rocket started rotating mid-air when it failed to break free of its booster shortly after takeoff on April 27. It began falling uncontrollably back to Earth, and was detonated over Boca Chica, Texas, within minutes of launch.

Before it even got to that point, Starship had damaged the pad and nearby space center infrastructure during blastoff, and scattered ash and dust over wildlife areas and a nearby town. A video recording of the flight showed chunks of concrete being kicked up by the launch and smashing the windows of a car, and created a cloud of ash and dirt. The mess descended onto Port Isabel, where residents reported hearing the roar of Starship's engines and feeling the ground shake.
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Meanwhile, data collected from the recently deceased InSight probe has revealed details about Mars' inner core, which is now believed to be much smaller and denser than originally thought.

While scientists had previous InSight findings that provided some details about Mars' interior, previous seismic waves reflected off the planet's core and provided less data. These latest pair of seismic waves passed right through Mars' core, revealing it to be composed of liquid iron as well as around a fifth of it being made up of sulfur, oxygen, carbon and hydrogen.


"Determining the amount of these elements in a planetary core is important for understanding the conditions in our solar system when planets were forming and how these conditions affected the planets that formed," said co-author Doyeon Kim of ETH Zurich.
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Some said the first FAA report thingy took into account a explosion while on pad and because that did not happen nothing will block SpaceX for future launches. But idk.
 

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