Some Thoughts on the SpaceX Starship Launch - Update

SpaceX finally launched their Super Heavy/Starship rocket today. The good news is that it got off the ground and through MaxQ. The bad news is that it lost control and had to be destroyed shortly thereafter.

Here's a video of the launch.

 

It's clear from the video (and confirmed by watching the SpaceX feed) that five or six engines were out during the ascent. That's probably the reason the booster started spinning and tumbling. So they have some work to do on the Raptors.

There was also a lot of damage under the launch pad. On my Mastodon feed, someone posted a drone shot of the pad after the launch and you can see a substantial crater in the middle. It's also possible that flying debris may have caused some of the engine failures. They are likely going to have to install a flame diverter trench and water deluge before they can launch again. That may take months. 

So not a success, but not a total failure either. 

Now we wait for SpaceX to analyse the copious amounts of data they must now have and figure out their next steps. They have several Super Heavy boosters and Starships waiting in the wings once they figure out how to correct the problems from today's launch.

One final note: After reading through the many messages on my Mastodon feed about the launch, it's clear that Musk's reputation has suffered greatly from his takeover and near destruction of Twitter. 

Update: Over at Ars Technica, Eric Berger says what I was trying to say, but much more eloquently. 

After Thursday's test, the Internet was on fire. For many people, Elon Musk has done and said some hate-able things of late, and they were ready to hate on him and his rocket company for screwing the pooch. After all, how stupid could engineers be for celebrating a spectacular failure like this?

This is a totally understandable take. For a general audience who sees NASA at work, an agency that can't afford to fail, this looks like failure. NASA failures often involve the loss of human life or billion-dollar satellites. So yeah, government explosions are bad.

But this was not that. For those who know a bit more about the launch industry and the iterative design methodology, getting the Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage off the launch pad was a huge success.

Why? Because one could sit in meetings for ages and discuss everything that could go wrong with a rocket like this, with an unprecedented number of first stage engines and its colossal size. The alternative is simply to get the rocket into a "good enough" configuration and go fly. Flying is the ultimate test, providing the best data. There is no more worrying about theoretical failures. The company's engineers actually get to identify what is wrong and then go and fix it. But you have to accept some failure.