SpaceX's Starship Super Heavy Booster Came Within 1 Second of Aborting Its First 'Catch' Landing (spacenews.com) 72
SpaceNews reports:
SpaceX's Super Heavy booster came within a second of aborting a "catch" landing attempt on the latest Starship test flight, according to audio posted online, apparently inadvertently, by Elon Musk... In the audio, one person, not identified, described an issue with the Super Heavy landing burn where a "misconfigured" parameter meant that spin pressure, presuming in the Raptor engines in the booster, did not increase as expected. "We were one second away from that tripping and telling the rocket to abort and try to crash into the ground next to the tower," that person said. That scenario would "erroneously tell a healthy rocket to not try that catch...."
The people on the audio note that there had been discussions of delaying the Flight 5 launch to provide additional time to check those parameters. "We were scared about the fact that we had 100 aborts that were not super-trivial," one person said... Another issue discussed in the audio... was a cover on a chine, a vertical structure on the booster, that came off as the vehicle went transonic during its descent. A SpaceX official said in the audio that having chine cover come off was something that they were worried about before launch... The person also started to discuss an issue with the engine plume during the landing burn, but the video stops at that point.
The discussions appeared to involve planning for the next Starship test flight, Flight 6. SpaceX is moving ahead with preparations for the flight, moving the next Super Heavy booster to the launch site for testing. "Flight 6 is coming up soon!" Musk posted early Oct. 25.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
The people on the audio note that there had been discussions of delaying the Flight 5 launch to provide additional time to check those parameters. "We were scared about the fact that we had 100 aborts that were not super-trivial," one person said... Another issue discussed in the audio... was a cover on a chine, a vertical structure on the booster, that came off as the vehicle went transonic during its descent. A SpaceX official said in the audio that having chine cover come off was something that they were worried about before launch... The person also started to discuss an issue with the engine plume during the landing burn, but the video stops at that point.
The discussions appeared to involve planning for the next Starship test flight, Flight 6. SpaceX is moving ahead with preparations for the flight, moving the next Super Heavy booster to the launch site for testing. "Flight 6 is coming up soon!" Musk posted early Oct. 25.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
It's nice... (Score:3, Interesting)
...to hear some internal details. What SpaceX gas achieved, and is achieving, is revolutionizing access to space.
Musk can have whatever politics he wants - we (all of humanity) owe him a massive debt for his vision - and it was his vision - that has led to these achievements.
Re: It's nice... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say it's more a case of honor to Gwynne Shotwell who's the COO of SX:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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But afaik Elon is and has been the "vision guy" and driving force behind the insane "it can't be done" stuff.
Re: It's nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Musk had the original vision of reusability, and rapid iteration. Gwynne Shotwell has done an outstanding job of realizing that vision.
That's like saying Steve Jobs had the original vision of personal computers, Woz just realized it. It's not even wrong...
This particular "vision" is the same total bullshit we deal with in the software industry. Get it done fast and cheap and blow things up, bluster your way through all the fuckups and act like it was all part of the plan. It doesn't take a big brain to see why that works, and doesn't.
The vision of getting to space as cheaply as possible with reusable vehicles and boosters is not something
Re:It's nice... (Score:5, Interesting)
Musk can have whatever politics he wants - we (all of humanity) owe him a massive debt for his vision - and it was his vision - that has led to these achievements.
I'll grant you, that overall, Musk's visions for SpaceX and Tesla have changed the world for the better. (Setting aside internal issues in these companies.) Starlink is also a good thing, as long as it doesn't ruin ground-based astronomy. Twitter? Yeah, not so much.
Let's not forget that the success of these companies depends on many brilliant employees, not just Musk's vision.
As for his politics, of course he has a right to say what he thinks, but I'm not happy with what he says, or that he has such a gigantic megaphone. It's a stain on his legacy IMHO.
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You know what ruined ground-based astronomy? The atmosphere.
Hardly. The atmosphere is a hindrance (thermal shimmer, and its opacity to certain light-wavelengths) but just look at all the ground-based astronomy that got done before the space age, and that continues today.
Now, add a bunch of satellites streaking across the sky (when they're illuminated) and you have a distraction. Kind of like someone yelling out random numbers while you're trying to add up figures without a calculator.
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"Random" numbers that are completely predictable, sure. Satellite reflections are annoying, but they're easy to remove and only affect observations within a certain time after sunset and before sunrise. Artificial lighting is way worse because it diffuses and lights up the whole atmosphere.
There's an observatory near me that formerly hosted one of the largest telescopes in the world but it's a tourist attraction now because the city grew up around it. Most of the scientific astronomy has been chased away to
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Predictable if you can keep track of the many thousands of satellites up there, but point taken. Perhaps "manageable" is a better way to put it: you can "dodge" the satellite tracks in real-time as they pass across a field of view, but it's still an unwelcome hassle.
And you're right about light pollution affecting (and eventually ruining) several legacy telescope installations. I haven't worked in the field, but I remember the days of mercury-based streetlights causing unwanted spikes in stellar spectra.
Tha
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Musk is also awful when it comes to internet companies. He shredded a LOT of corporate value when he took over twitter.
And his toxic politics are probably gonna be the thing that ends his run as a reputable public figure. He should have stayed out of presidential politics. If Trump loses, Musk
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You act like Tesla was the only EV company, and SpaceX was the only space company. Apparently nobody else knew about government contracts and RFPs, that’s the premise of your argument?
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How long have you been predicting Elon's doom? It has to be for a while. Which rocket or EV company is on his tail? Nobody has anything like Starship in testing, and it will take at least 6 or 7 years for his closest competitor (Blue Origin?) to catch up (and that's being generous -- Blue Origin is still trying to catch up to year 2015 Falcon 9 .. New Glenn was announced about a decade ago and is yet to fly). You're expecting them to have a Starship competitor when? They haven't even announced it! And while
Dude he's running a multi-billion dollar car compa (Score:4, Interesting)
He's just going to become politically in economically irrelevant in the next 10 years or so. He doesn't want that because he's a greedy egotistical psychopath and he's willing to destroy America just to avoid that.
But make no mistake Leon's going to be just fine. He's just not going to be showing up in anyone's news feed in 10 years. Assuming Donald Trump doesn't win the election and start sending contracts over to him despite close ties to a hostile foreign dictator...
Thing is Trump is going to have to replace the generals before he does that because they don't want musk around anymore. No sane person would hand a security clearance or anything that actually mattered to somebody who has been an open and continuous communication with a hostile foreign nation.
Christ how low we've fallen that that's not a deal breaker for half the country..
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I agree - Elon has the ability to quickly take advantage of government programs. He sees the free money on the table, and picks it up.
Honestly, Teslas would be great even if they were ICE based - the innovation is more in the onboard compute than in the drivetrain.
That being said, twitter was a sacrifice play - he singlehandedly saved free speech in the US. If you judge it as a financial investment, it makes no sense. But if it lets him determine the next president of the United States, and implement a D
You can't expect me to take you seriously (Score:2)
Christ I almost think you're beating me. Your post is almost professionally written with just enough reasonable points made that pointing out the insanity of calling musk the S
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I would love to be paid by Musk, but I haven't gotten that kind of attention :). I assure you, I'm a real person, just as reasonable as you are, but most likely starting from different premises.
As for saving free speech, let's take your point at face value - Musk has a certain cadre of MSM "journalists" he might be suppressing there. But he has left the door wide open for other non-MSM "journalists" who have zero other outlets for their point of view. Even in his *bias*, he's saved free speech by given a
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Wow so big government created Tesla and Space X and made Elon a billionaire and you're mad at him and not big government.
Do you actually have to work at being stupid or does it come naturally?
Re:It's nice... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a stain on his legacy IMHO.
Approximately half of the US population disagrees with you on that. I'm not in the US, but I find it a genuine shame that US politics has become so divisive. It ought to be possible to hold a different political viewpoint, without that being regarded as a "stain".
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It's the extremity of the thing. Bush Jr. won by a tiny margin, but Gore supporters didn't call Bush supporters stains. Reagan beat Carter by a huge margin, Bush Sr. thoroughly defeated Mondale but it was still possible to have a political conversation where the participants were on opposite sides of the fence.
That's because Reagan, both Bushes, Carter, Mondale, etc weren't pussy grabbing teen girl perving multiple felons. Even Clinton. He couldn't keep it in his pants, but at least he waited until the woma
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It ought to be possible to hold a different political viewpoint, without that being regarded as a "stain".
I agree that they shouldn't have elected a fascist felon as their party leader.
Re: It's nice... (Score:2)
Re: It's nice... (Score:1)
Are electric cars consumerism?
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Let's not forget that the success of these companies depends on many brilliant employees, not just Musk's vision.
I don't believe anyone here (or anyone at all) even remotely believes that Elon Musk created Tesla or SpaceX alone or could create those companies with a bunch of terrible employees.
However, Tesla and SpaceX would not have succeeded without Elon Musk and I don't think anyone in those two companies was more important than him. Baglino? Straubel? Mueller? Yeah, maybe the company would have not succeeded without them either but we're still nowhere close to the importance of Musk.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Trum
Catch 22 (Score:2)
Benefits of bleeding-edge GNC. (Score:2)
So they dodged a software-error bullet (Score:2)
Other missions have not been as lucky. [wikipedia.org]
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Is human override not possible? (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand that for most things with a rocket, especially one that's trying to land on its own tail on a target with almost no margin for error, decisions have to be made by computer because no human could be fast enough.
But if you have a reading that is slowly climbing towards an issue... isn't there enough time for the experts who are most certainly holding their breath at mission control to determine if the control algorithm is on the threshold of making a mistake and make a real-time adjustment?
At the cost of a rocket and the price tag of the entire development system, I'd have a computer for each block of critical decision-making code already up on a screen with someone monitoring it and nice big 'override - FORCE OK', 'override - FORCE FAIL' buttons and maybe sliders to adjust inputs you know aren't right.
Re:Is human override not possible? (Score:4, Funny)
Human override is only advisable for 1201 program alarms.
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Worked for Apollo, but I'd say that specific class is actually NOT a suitable target for human override in this situation.
It takes time to reboot a system, and when you are tail-landing a rocket I don't know exactly how many decisions per second you're making, but I'd bet that it is not a small number and any gap in processing would increase the odds of a failure dramatically.
Re:Is human override not possible? (Score:4, Informative)
Eh... I think the attitude is more like devops automation. If it blows up, it blows up, fix it in the next iteration. Don't release to production until everything is running reliably, and test the boundaries to figure out what the failure modes are.
The moment you start relying on humans in the loop, you're creating a dependency that may not be reproducible, and certainly is not scalable. Crazy as it sounds, they want to launch over a dozen of these monsters a day.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/k... [forbes.com]
"âoeStarship is the first design of a rocket that is actually capable of making life multi-planetary,â Musk said from his Starbase launch center, as he sketched out a two-decade timeline for flying one million inter-world migrants to the Red Planet as it is terraformed.
That will require 10,000 flights of Starship, he says, with fleets set to leave Earth orbit every 26 months, as the Hohmann transfer window opens for optimum flights to the reddish orb, which revolves along the outer boundary of the solar systemâ(TM)s habitable zone."
Ignoring propellant boil off, because I don't know if 10,000 includes boil off or not, let's assume every month they launch 10k/26 or 384 launches. Assuming 30 days in a month, that's 12.8 launches per day.
I think they were fully expecting to lose this one, so keeping the booster (mostly) intact was a giant bonus for teardown. But I don't think it would be worth it to specifically save the booster and invalidate the live test of the automated systems by dynamically changing abort values on the fly.
Maybe I'm wrong, and they decide to add that as a manual (in case of emergency, break glass) corrective step next time. But you never know, trying to change live values during the landing could have triggered a different problem...
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I look at it like this - once you have determined that you have a human-correctable issue that will cause a total failure if not corrected... you already have your telemetry. Avoiding the failure might mean MORE data, not less.
Certainly whatever the human did would inform how the next test was run.
But yes, I'm just an Internet armchair quarterback; if the engineers think this is best, they're the ones getting paid to design the rockets and testing regimen because they're the one with the training and exper
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I think it's technically possible, but I doubt anyone really wants to be the guy who pressed the big red button and blew up the rocket. If it turns out you made the wrong decision, you've probably ended your career... and even if it turns out you made the right decision, you'll always have people wondering if things would have worked out better if you hadn't pressed the button, so you'll always have a big asterisk following you around.
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>I doubt anyone really wants to be the guy who pressed the big red button and blew up the rocket.
Funny thing is, THAT override button typically exists. Russia apparently doesn't equip their rockets with a self destruct, which seems pretty stereotypically Russian, but so far as I'm aware all the other major rocket-launching nations of the planet do.
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They watched Galaxy Quest. All self destruct countdowns have to run down to one second.
Fail faster! (Score:2)
It is of course hilarious that it's in the background as Elon plays a videogame. (Oh, and remember that Elon is just s figurehead with no real involvement in the engineering side of any of his companies, according to the muskophobe troll army
Re:Fail faster! (Score:5, Interesting)
He has enthusiasm for certain ideas, and wealth to promote them into reality.
If wealth was all it took, Boeing would have trounced SpaceX. Hell, Bezos would have trounced SpaceX too. You're confusing cause and effect: Elon is wealthy because he executed some exceptional ideas, repeatedly and in the face of an army of obstructionist naysayers, not the other way around.
... did you swallow the Russiagate propaganda???
...
Conflating Putin and Trump is just stupid, and so is the "fascist" label applied to Trump according to left-leaning political science professors who have written about the subject. Unless of course you use "fascist" to mean "something I don't like" as is so commonly done. That of course says more about the commentator than anyone else. The Russia thing is even dumber in light of the actual implemented policies of the Trump administration. Oh wait
Have you considered the notion that you've been sucked in by the propaganda efforts of a lot of interests who are spending massive amounts of money to shape public opinion? Having had a ringside seat for large scale online reputation campaigns, I sit up and notice when a bunch of people start saying the same thing all of a sudden. You're parroting the same stuff I see elsewhere
Oh, and I am a Bernie Bro who is voting Green again this year so you're going to have to find some other way to attack my position than assuming I'm some kind of knuckle dragging Trumpist.
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voting Green again
no need, you've already told us you're a knuckle dragging trumpist enabler
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But being a Californian who marched with BLM, I'm not voting for the fucking cop under any circumstances. At least I have some principles--unlike Mr Anonymous Dickhead.
Re:Fail faster! (Score:5, Informative)
Is Trump a fascist? 8 experts weigh in. [vox.com]
Now, did you get your political science degree on Reddit, or Instagram?
Obama had a goddamn assassination list and used it on an American citizen without a shred of due process. Does that make him "fascist" too? Have you forgotten Occupy, Standing Rock, BLM 1.0, and a bunch of other stuff like Kids In Cages 1.0? Yeah, I thought so. Me, I was at Occupy and I marched with BLM; a dear friend got way too close to some bad stuff at Standing Rock. Where were you? Yeah, I thought so.
Biden ended up building the fucking wall, after all, and he has been only too happy to continue numerous other Trump policies (which are of course Obama/Dubya/Bubba policies) but you don't give a shit. Now we have the greatest undemocratic subversion in American history, namely the anointment/coronation of the cop Kamala Harris for whom there were ZERO votes, and you toss a word like "fascism" around without having a clue what it actually means.
Fuck, dude, you are the problem. You, and the rest of the tribalist shits who parrot whatever propaganda your "team" cynically crams down your throats. You're only too happy to go along with Trumpism as long as it's perpetrated by the Right People who say the Right Things.
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FPTP voting creates lots of problems. One of them is that it doesn't leave a place for perfectionists and nihilists who can't see that differences in degree are real and significant differences. They're the types that'll look at someone doing 75 on a 70-mph highway, and some else doing 75 in a school zone, and say they're the same thing (speeding! at 75!).
If Harris wins, a lot of things will not go the way I would hope. If Trump wins, it'll be an absolute fucking disaster, and I'll be exhausted finding ways
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(first order of business will probably be helping some trans friends get out of the country).
This is the dumbest thing I've read all day, and that is saying a lot. What do you think is going to happen, exactly? Pogroms? Concentration camps? You're as bad as the Meal Team Six retards with their prepping and "when the shit hits the fan" forum circle jerks.
Get a grip, kid.
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They are worried about keeping custody of their kid:
https://time.com/7015646/proje... [time.com]
After a campaign spent demonizing immigrants, the previous Trump administration deliberately separated thousands of kids from their families [forbes.com]. This time around they're heavily campaigning on an anti-trans agenda [newrepublic.com]. That'll be combined with a plan to replace the bureaucracy with Trump loyalists [thehill.com], which means there may not be anything to stand in the way of the Project 2025 types and their goals.
Even if the anti-trans crowd does
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On this topic, I'll note that my wife is a veteran primary school special education teacher. She suddenly has several "trans" kids every year where none existed before. In every case, the parent (100% of the time it is a single mother) is batshit crazy and in some cases abusive and/or neglectful to the point that my wife is compelled to file CPS reports. There are rare cases of true gen
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I guess their are idiots on both sides...
(Honestly, the extreme partisan atmosphere these days is the absolutely worst thing of all.)
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Fascism (/fæzm/ FASH-iz-m) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
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Elon is wealthy because he was born to the owner of several emerald mines.
If not for that, there would have been no funding of X.com which acquired Confinity to become Paypal, no founding Space-X, no buying in to Tesla.
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https://www.snopes.com/news/20... [snopes.com]
As it happens, my degree of separation from Elon during the X/Paypal years was one--twice, i.e. via two people. (My degree of separation from Pud at fuckedcompany is also one, which amuses me.) I missed getting rich by that much, twice, but it was a hell of a ride.
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So Musk was born to a really well off guy who once owned a significant stake in an emerald mine.
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Now show us on the doll where Elon touched you.
Ya, but ... (Score:1)
More importantly, how'd Musk fair in Diablo IV, while that was happening?
‘Yikes’: While gaming, Musk inadvertently broadcasts ‘scary’ near-abort of Starship booster landing [techcrunch.com]
Pushing to Learn Fast with Minimum Tests (Score:2)
I'm sure that Elon encouraged Shotwell to accelerate by pushing limits, heavy sensing & documenting and learning multiple "things" from each test/flight.
They have done a great job of showing how fast you can proceed in design, trials and production, if you carefully push the limits.
I'm proud that Space X has achieved it here in the US and demonstrated how to succeed, again. We need more of this. Others are also working rather secretly, without being "in public" like Anduril and others, so I know the l
grounded crew9 anomaly +500ms (Score:1)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
lets not forget about the unexpected 500ms extra reentry burn for crew9 that caused the returning booster to go outside planned reentry into airspace that was not cleared... almost grounding Europa clipper launch
Oh noes! (Score:1)
Audio inadvertently posted by Elon Musk (Score:2)