Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starship rocket and spacecraft lost in second test flight | CNN
www.cnn.com
SpaceX reached several milestones in its Starship rocket system’s second integrated test flight before losing the booster and spacecraft.

SpaceX’s Starship rocket system reached several milestones in its second test flight before the rocket booster and spacecraft exploded over the Gulf of Mexico.

  • iterable@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    10 months ago

    I wonder what the simulation showed was going to happen compared to the actual flight. Would give you a real metric of progress.

    • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      10 months ago

      If the simulation showed a problem, they could have fixed it before launch. I’m guessing they don’t have a enough data to make a super high fidelity integrated model for all phases of fight, so they’d break down the sections individually. But integration always brings extra challenges.

      • iterable@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        10 months ago

        So they don’t have a physicist on staff? Or several? We have known the math for rocket science for some time. What data is it they need? When even NASA in the sixties has simulators.

        • JohnDClay@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          10 months ago

          I’m sure they have tons. But we don’t know the full thermo areo dynamics at hypersonic speeds and complex geometries, especially their effect on unconventional control surfaces across huge temperature and speed ranges. Some military companies have even bought flights on electron to get high altitude hypersonic velocity data on how the air behaves in that regime.

  • pan_troglodytes@programming.devEnglish
    01·
    10 months ago

    eh… it looks like hot-staging still has some bugs to work out, but the 2nd stage worked just fine (and since that’s the part that matters, the end fate of the first stage is irrelevant)

    good test all in all