SpaceX Starship OFT-2

[Elderberry]

[4K] Watch SpaceX launch Starship, the biggest rocket ever, LIVE up close and personal!

Everyday Astronaut    Started streaming 5 hours ago

This is the second fully integrated full stack test flight of Starship and the mighty Super Heavy booster, the largest and most most powerful rocket to ever fly. It produces over twice as much thrust as the Saturn V that took humans to the moon.

The goal of the test is to get further along than IFT-2 in April 20th which didn't make it to stage separation while also hoping the improvements to the launch pad hold up better than the previous attempt. If all goes well, Starship will re-enter near Hawaii about 90 minutes after it lifts off from Starbase, TX, nearly completing an orbit of the Earth. This would allow the teams to test the reentry profile and heat shields for the first time from orbital velocities.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6na40SqzYnU

[Elderberry]

SpaceX
@SpaceX

All systems and weather are go for the second integrated flight test of Starship. Today's webcast will go live ~35 minutes ahead of liftoff → http://spacex.com/launches

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1725834753537188097

[Elderberry]

https://twitter.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1725829697232122034

[Elderberry]

T- 10 Minutes

[Elderberry]

Hold @ T-40secs Normal hold Point

[Elderberry]

Counting!!!

[Elderberry]

Launched!!!!

[Elderberry]

Stage Separation complete!

[Elderberry]

Booster RUD!!!!

[Elderberry]

2nd Stage on its way.

[bigheadfred]

FANTASTIC!

[Elderberry]

Lost Communication with 2nd stage

[Cyber Liberty]

Lost Communication with 2nd stage

Ruh rho...

[Right_in_Virginia]

Elon Musk is legend. NASA could never.

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1725887683375890580

[Right_in_Virginia]

Incredible view of Elon Musk's Starship lift off.

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1725887510390169923

[Right_in_Virginia]

Liftoff of Starship!

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1725862657780281349

[catfish1957]

twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1725887683375890580

"Elon Musk is legend. NASA could never."

And why many don't know and understand that if Musk ever took SpaceX public, he'd become the world's first Trillionaire.

[Elderberry]

Watch: SpaceX Starship Test Flight Launches Before Exploding


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJ7jqLav8o

[Right_in_Virginia]

SpaceX
@SpaceX

Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an exciting second integrated flight test of Starship!

Starship successfully lifted off under the power of all 33 Raptor engines on the Super Heavy Booster and made it through stage separation

9:12 AM · Nov 18, 2023

[Elderberry]

The rocketship reached space following lift-off from south Texas before communication was suddenly lost.

SpaceX officials said it appears the ship’s self-destruct system blew it up over the Gulf of Mexico.

[Elderberry]

FAA to oversee investigation of SpaceX's explosive 2nd Starship flight

Space.com By Mike Wall 11/18/2023

SpaceX will figure out why Saturday's (Nov. 18) test flight ended just eight minutes after liftoff.

SpaceX will figure out why Saturday's (Nov. 18) test flight ended just eight minutes after liftoff.

The second-ever test flight of SpaceX's giant Starship rocket has spurred an investigation, just as the first one did.

Starship lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase site in South Texas on Saturday (Nov. 18), kicking off a test mission that aimed to send the vehicle's upper stage most of the way around Earth.

The target was a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii about 90 minutes after launch. But Saturday's flight ended just eight minutes in, with the "rapid unscheduled disassembly" of Starship's upper stage. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) deemed this outcome a mishap and will supervise an investigation into its cause.

-----

Indeed, SpaceX hailed Saturday's test flight as a success.

"Honestly, it's such an incredibly successful day, even though we did have a rapid unscheduled disassembly of both the Super Heavy booster and the Ship," SpaceX quality engineering manager Kate Tice said during the live webcast. (Super Heavy was supposed to splash down in the Gulf of Mexico about seven minutes after launch, but it exploded shortly after stage separation.)

"That's great," Tice added. "We got so much data, and that will all help us to improve for our next flight."

It's unclear when that next flight will take place; that depends on the outcome of the investigation, and how many adjustments SpaceX may need to make before the FAA clears Starship for liftoff once again.

More: https://www.space.com/faa-oversee-investigation-second-starship-flight

[Elderberry]

A look at the launch site, post-flight

CNN By Jackie Wattles

https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/spacex-starship-launch-scn/index.html

SpaceX's launchpad appears to be fully intact, indicating that a new water deluge system used to dampen the jarring forces of the Super Heavy rocket's engines during takeoff helped keep the ground facilities safe.

Cameron County — the Texas county that encompasses Starship's launch site — opened the single road that runs out to SpaceX's launch facility and the public beaches shortly after launch. It was a quick turnaround for the county, which left the roads closed significantly longer after the inaugural test launch in April.

One key factor at play: SpaceX acknowledged that the sheer force of Super Heavy's engines after the April launch tore apart the launchpad. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk referred to it as a "rock tornado."

But the new deluge system used during this launch shot nearly 360,000 gallons of water upward as the engines ignited during this morning's launch. When CNN visited the launch site a few hours after takeoff, the stand that the rocket launched from appeared to be unharmed and there were no immediately visible signs of large debris in the area.

[DB]

Watch: SpaceX Starship Test Flight Launches Before Exploding


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJ7jqLav8o

From the video it looked like the first stage blew up well after separating. The second stage was continuing on. Why did the second stage get destroyed?

[GtHawk]

From the video it looked like the first stage blew up well after separating. The second stage was continuing on. Why did the second stage get destroyed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMJIRTCK--I

[Elderberry]

From Reddit:

What would cause RUD at that late stage?

There was a weird gas stream starting at T+07:06 and a second puff of gas T+07:38, another puff at T+08:04 and what looks to me like the final explosion at T+08:07 and then there was nothing. Maybe the second stage was damaged by the hot staging event and started leaking later on when g-forces became higher, just some speculation

I noticed that too and on Tim's stream it almost sounds like you hear a background reaction to whatever happened at T+07:38 via the space x audio they were playing, it comes a split second before we see the event.

maybe it was someone from the control room swearing over some irregular data that they received

Who knows if the interface from the live stream shows live sensor data, but I noticed that starting with the first stream of gas at T+07:06 the LOX meter started to decrase faster than the CH4 meter, while it was the other way around just before that

FTS triggered for some reason, may have been off track, or maybe lost something in the engines so it triggered since it wasn't yet in orbit

For all we know, the activation could have been caused by a spurious condition or an overly sensitive instrument.

If the #Starship self-destruct mechanism indeed took place when it was about to shut off its engines, then this should be the approximate area where it #disintegrated: