[ Why its Elon Musks fault]
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WHY THE GIANT ROCKET FAILED  
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Mark Sumner
April 22, 2023
Daily Kos
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_ Why it's Elon Musk's fault _

SpaceX Starship lifts off from the launchpad during a flight test
from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. April 20, 2023, AFP via Getty
Images

 

On Thursday, SpaceX launched its first full version of the
“Starship” rocket from a pad on the coast near South Padre Island,
Texas. Four minutes into the flight, the rocket was deliberately
destroying at an altitude of about 35 km, with debris raining down
about a dozen kilometers out into the Gulf.

In many ways, the flight was a triumph. It was the largest rocket ever
constructed. It had more engines than any other booster in history,
edging out Russia’s failed N-1 Moon rocket. It was constructed
largely in the open, in full view of fascinated space fans, instead of
behind closed door in near “clean room” conditions. Observers
watched as the Starship was welded together from rolls of stainless
steel, rather than constructed from carbon fiber, aluminum, or other
more traditional rocket materials. The engines for the Starship were
developed from scratch in conjunction with the rocket, trading more
usual fuels for methane and reaching extreme levels of efficiency.

On Thursday, SpaceX launched its first full version of the
“Starship” rocket from a pad on the coast near South Padre Island,
Texas. Four minutes into the flight, the rocket was deliberately
destroying at an altitude of about 35 km, with debris raining down
about a dozen kilometers out into the Gulf.

In many ways, the flight was a triumph. It was the largest rocket ever
constructed. It had more engines than any other booster in history,
edging out Russia’s failed N-1 Moon rocket. It was constructed
largely in the open, in full view of fascinated space fans, instead of
behind closed door in near “clean room” conditions. Observers
watched as the Starship was welded together from rolls of stainless
steel, rather than constructed from carbon fiber, aluminum, or other
more traditional rocket materials. The engines for the Starship were
developed from scratch in conjunction with the rocket, trading more
usual fuels for methane and reaching extreme levels of efficiency.

Everything about the Starship was the result of a series of decisions
designed to make spaceflight cheaper. The methane fuel. The steel
structure. The method of construction. Even the rocket’s enormous
size. All of it was a gamble to create a system that is fully
reusable, bringing the cost of getting to orbit down to a small
fraction of what it is today and making space almost infinitely more
accessible.

However, one decision in the process didn’t just result in the
destruction of the rocket, it generated a cascade of failures, one
that’s likely to set the program back by a least a year, erasing the
chance of NASA’s scheduled return to the Moon in the process. That
decision, is 100% on Elon Musk.

At both Tesla and SpaceX, Musk has frequently repeated his basic
philosophy of design [[link removed]]. 

“The best part is no part. The best process is no process. It weighs
nothing. Costs nothing. Can’t go wrong.” — Elon Musk

It’s certainly an approach that seems to bear some serious fruit.
You can see if in Tesla’s cars, where a single touch screen has
replaced all the buttons that would normally operate the radio, air
conditioner, and everything else that is crammed onto the dash of
other cars. Doing it that way greatly simplifies the construction of a
Tesla, though it frustrates some potential owners, and is part of why
right now that company is able to engage in a price war with other
car makers while still maintaining a relatively high profit margin.

Ford loses money on its Mustang EV. Tesla makes money on the Model Y.
And the Model Y is cheaper. It’s also much more successful. Right
now, the Model Y is the best-selling car in almost every nation where
it’s sold, including the United States, outselling such longtime
stalwarts as the Toyota Corolla. (Though it’s still outsold by the
F-150 and Chevy Silverado. Because this is America, where everyone
needs a truck.)

However, you can also see the downside of Musk’s “the best part is
no part” philosophy at Tesla. In its constant efforts to simplify
construction, Tesla removed the radar that was part of the
traffic-aware cruise control in earlier models, making them completely
dependant on how their software interprets images from cameras. Can
you say “phantom breaking?” If you drive a Tesla, you can. They
followed up by removing even the ultrasonic sensors that were used to
help detect nearby obstacles.

As a result of this, for some months buyers of new Teslas found
themselves without park assist warnings, and even those who paid the
ridiculous $15,000 Musk wants for “full self driving” found that
their cars couldn’t do so much as the automatic parking that is
available on many cars. Some of this has since been fixed, but there
are remaining restrictions when compared to the older cars with radar
and sensors.

In fact, the full self-driving, which is still far from complete
years after Musk first said it was “two weeks away,” is likely a
victim of this philosophy. Other car companies pursing this goal have
employed both radar and laser-based lidar to characterize the world
around the car. Musk has insisted from the beginning that cameras were
enough and resisted any attempt to add other systems to the car
(though it now seems that radars may make a return
[[link removed]]).
Considering the effort, and dollars, that Tesla has applied to their
autonomous vehicle efforts, it’s hard to say where they would be if
Musk hadn’t crippled the effort on the hardware end.

And it was just such a stubborn refusal to add necessary hardware that
not only doomed the initial launch of Starship, but stands likely to
derail the whole project for months. If not more.

What went wrong?

Just over two minutes into the flight, Starship was reaching the point
where the massive 33 engine booster stage should have shut down and
handed over to the 6-engine upper stage (also, confusingly, known as
Starship). In most rockets, a hydraulic or mechanical system is used
to push the two stages apart. Not on Starship. Instead the rocket
just pitches over slightly. That’s supposed to allow the two parts
to gently separate, after which the second stage fires its engines and
heads for orbit while the booster flies back to earth.

That didn’t happen. Instead, all of Starship stayed in one piece,
rotating end over end, until the ship actually began to bend in the
middle and SpaceX controllers on the ground were forced to press the
flight termination button on the falling rocket.

So was that it? Was the missing system for separating the two stages
the issue?

It may turn out to be _an _issue in future flights. But it wasn’t
what went wrong on Thursday. To understand the problem requires going
back to the first seconds of the flight, and to decisions that were
made months ago.

Stage Zero

SpaceX has referred to its elaborate launch table and tower as
“stage zero” for their rockets, and it’s actually more complex,
and more costly, than the rockets themselves. It has some special
features, because it has to.

* LIFTING ARMS
Because of the way Starship is constructed out of very thin steel,
it’s structurally sound only when upright. It’s not possible to
lay the rocket over on its side as is done with other rockets,
including SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. Getting the upper
stage onto the booster also has to be done in the upright position. At
NASA, the upper stages of the Saturn V were all stacked inside the
Vehicle Assembly Building and rolled to the launch pad on the very
slow, very massive, very expressive crawler. SpaceX brings the pieces
to the pad one at a time, then lifting arms—using a motor designed
for oil rigs—lifts the booster onto the pad, then lifts the second
stage onto the booster. The pad is the assembly building for Starship.
* CHOPSTICKS
Those same arms are also referred to as “chopsticks,” which is a
pun on a scene from the movie “The Karate Kid” in which the wise
karate teacher instructs the main character on how to capture a fly
from mid-air using chopsticks. Unlike the Falcon boosters, which land
on legs, the Super Heavy Booster from Starship is intended to
eventually fly back to the pad, hover, and be caught by the same arms
that lift it. So they have a whole system designed to allow the arms
the range of movement necessary to catch the booster. This was done so
that the booster didn’t have to carry the weight of legs and their
associated systems. Is this the part that was removed which caused the
problem? Nope.
* CLAMPS
The table on which the booster sets is quite elaborate, with a series
of small water jets inside to help cool and protect systems, and a
ring of hydraulic clamps that can hold the Starship down during test
firing of the engine. That system is actual related to what went
wrong. But we’re about to get there.

Put it all together, and “Stage Zero” is more costly and much more
time consuming to construct than than even a half dozen Starships. The
rocket is, after all, designed to be super cheap. Part of that
individual cheapness comes from moving functionality to the pad. The
booster that flew was actually booster 7. The upper stage was ship 24.
SpaceX has rolled through that many prototypes getting to this point.
Most of them have simply been cut up for scrap. But it has only built
one launch tower.

Now, let’s walk through the actual flight.

The short life of Starship

After a hold at T-40 seconds, SpaceX seemed satisfied that all issues
had been addressed and walked down to the launch. However, right from
the beginning there was a bit of weirdness. The engines should have
fired up at around T -6. They didn’t. Instead, it wasn’t until
about one second before the clock hit zero that the first flames
appeared. Then the clock actually hesitated for a moment before moving
the other way. Five seconds later, Starship was still sitting on the
pad. It would be 15 seconds before it cleared the tower.

What’s also visible on close inspection of these image is some
absolutely enormous pieces of debris. It’s not just ice falling from
the sides of the tank, its massive chunks of concrete sent flying into
the sky, some of it coming up right alongside Starship. Images from
other angles show large chunks of concrete flying to the waters on all
sides of the tower. In fact, the reason that the cloud here is brown
rather than the white usually seen at Cape Kennedy launches is because
it’s not smoke. Most of it is sand, rock, and shattered concrete
being hurled up from the ground.

Much of Stage Zero was terrifically damaged at this point.

Starship still on the pad seven seconds after the engines first fired.

Sixteen seconds in, just after clearing the tower, SpaceX rolled out a
graphic that provides a lot of nice information about the progress of
the flight. But one of the first things that’s visible is that three
of the Raptor 2 engines on the flight are already out. That’s likely
because they were damaged by rocks or concrete chunks flung upward
while Starship was still on the pad.

Remember those clamps? On a rocket like the Saturn V, they would
actually hold the rocket in place for a couple of seconds while the
rocket came fully up to power. Then the clamps let go.

SpaceX did it another way. They opened the clamps before the countdown
even began. Then they slowly throttled up the rocket on the pad.
That’s why it took Starship, with twice the power of a Saturn V,
almost twice as long to clear the tower. It just sat there for a lot
longer, blasting away at the ground. That was all part of the plan
— but it was also part of what doomed the flight.

Sixteen seconds into the flight, Starship has cleared the pad, but it
has also lost three engines.

A minute into the flight, Starship was approaching “Max Q,” the
point of maximum stress on the airframe. The announcer certainly
sounds happy in the video of the flight at this point, but the truth
is that Starship is gaining velocity more slowly than expected, and is
several seconds behind in reaching this critical point. Looking at the
infographic, it’s not hard to see why.

One minute in. As Starship approaches Max Q, it’s down 4 engines,
possibly more

That graphic shows four engines out, but there are good reasons to
disbelieve the infographic by this point. Here’s a closeup on the
rear of Starship just a few seconds later.

Starship at T+ 1:10. At least six engines are out.

It’s not missing four engines. It’s missing six.

Starship is still going, but it is rising more slowly and gaining
speed with more difficulty than it should. Which isn’t surprising,
with 18% of its engine power missing. Not only have there been a
number of engine failures, when the first images come from the rocket,
they show that it is both rotating and also repeatedly changing its
attitude. The first probably represents a loss of some flight control,
possibly damage to a second stage fin or the ability of the booster to
gimbal its engines. The second is probably software struggling to put
the rocket onto the designed flight path, but failing because of those
missing engine. 

Also, the engine exhaust to this point has been very yellow — not
the expected color for a methane rocket. Starship is likely not
getting the correct balance of fuel and oxygen, possibly because of
damage to lines or valves while it was still on the ground. In
rocketry terms, it looks as if it is burning “engine rich,” eating
up the metal of its own systems as it goes.

Starship just before what should have been main engine cutoff and
stage separation

Two and a half minutes into the flight, Starship is nearing what
should be main engine cut off and stage separation. Only this is where
things go finally, terminally wrong. Because the main engines don’t
cut off. 

By this point, the infographic shows five boosters out, but as we’ve
already seen, that graphic isn’t accurate. A look at the flame
pattern suggests that Starship is now down by eight engines
— it’s lost almost a quarter of its thrust.

Even so, Starship does begin the pitch over maneuver that should
separate the two stages. That camera view on the left should show the
first stage dropping away and the second stage kicking in. Only it
doesn’t.

That’s because, even as Starship pitches, and pitches, and pitches,
eventually going through a full 360 degree loop, the main engine just
keeps firing. Down by eight engines, the rocket hasn’t reached the
speed or altitude it was supposed to attain. It also hasn’t burned
through the amount of fuel that it should have consumed. Some part of
the booster’s software seems to be insisting that it has to keep
going, even as another part has signalled time for separation.

That continued thrust from the first stage keeps the two parts of the
ship pressed together. They can’t separate, because the first stage
keeps on pushing and won't stop. The first stage keeps pitching, and
thrusting, and by now Starship is in a full head over heels tumble.
It’s also stopped gaining altitude, somewhere around 37km, and has
begun to fall back. The first stage is _still_ burning.

SpaceX lets it keep tumbling until it has fallen about a kilometer,
then it finally opens the plastic cover no one wants to open and
presses the big red button.

The flight termination system is used to destroy both stages of
Starship.

Here’s the TL;DR version of all of the above

* The no-clamps slow throttle-up meant Starship stayed on the pad for
a long time, throwing up concrete, rock, and sand all directions,
damaging the pad, nearby facilities, and Starship itself.
* By the time it left the pad, that debris had already destroyed
three of Starship’s engines and likely damaged valves and systems
that would lead to additional engine failures as well as an incorrect
fuel mixture.
* Starship was slow to reach every point in the flight plan,
suggesting that other engines were not able to throttle up to
compensate for the lost engines.
* At what should have been stage separation, either software errors
or more smashed hardware kept the main booster firing long after it
should have shut down.
* The result was an uncontrolled spin that required Starship to be
destroyed.

Why this is 100% Elon Musk’s fault

Starship is the work of hundreds of talented engineers and thousands
of employees who put their best into making this thing go. The design
is extremely daring, and something of a wonder. The engines are
amazing, even if they have demonstrated that reliability is currently
lacking. The whole system of construction promises to revolutionize
the space industry.

But are two parts that were left out of Starship that absolutely
doomed this flight and the decision not to include them falls right
with the guy at the end of the first row at “Star Command.”

Musk and the flight controllers at Boca Chica just after the
destruction of Starship

Those parts were not parts for the rocket. They were parts for the
launch pad.

For some reason, Musk became convinced early on that he did not want
the launch tower to have:

* A flame-diverter or flame trench to redirect the blast from the
booster’s engines
* A water deluge system to dump a massive amount of water around the
launch tower during liftoff

The launch facilities at Kennedy have both of these. Even the launch
pads used for the much smaller Falcon 9 have both a flame trench and a
water deluge. They help to protect not just the launch pad, and the
surrounding area, they also help to reduce the noise. Which sounds
trivial, but that noise is energy. That’s what broke up the concrete
under the Starship Stage Zero, not the fire. That’s what sent
car-sized chunks flying in all directions.

A flame diverter and a water deluge would have greatly reduced, or
even eliminated, the damage to the area around the pad. They would
have prevented the blow back of debris that damaged Starship before it
even left the ground. It might have headed off the whole cascade of
events that resulted in that button being pressed 4 minutes into the
flight.

We don’t have to guess about whose decision it was not to implement
these systems, because Musk already said he decided to skip these
systems over the recommendations of his engineers. Musk even had a
preview of what was going to happen, as past test flights of the upper
stage also resulted in significant spalling of concrete structures and
damage to at least one of the ships. He just made them try different
kinds of concrete.

The parts for a water deluge were actually on site, ready to install,
but Musk decided to forego that installation—likely so he could
enjoy the pun of launching his super-joint on 4/20. Which was
something Musk had joked about doing months ago. 

Hopefully he enjoyed the joke, because the EPA and FAA are going to be
thinking long and hard before they authorize another flight from Boca
Chica. All those engineers, and all those workers, and all their good
work, is held hostage to Musk’s whims.

Also a victim of Musk’s decision to leave these vital pieces off the
table? The Artemis Program at NASA. Musk has already been awarded the
contract to create the first lunar lander for the new program, but
that lander is absolutely dependent on Starship. It’s a sure bet
that Musk won’t have his part of the program ready on schedule.
It’s going to be some time before we even so another test flight.

In the meantime, SpaceX can repair the damage, build a flame
diverter, install that deluge system, clean up the software, and ditch
the whole “pitch over” means of stage separation for something
simpler—like using the second stage engines to push the stages apart
with an unignited shot of methane.

See you in 2024, Starship. Maybe.

* SpaceX
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* Elon Musk
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