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Dave Rauschenfels
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On April 20th of this year, the first SpaceX Starship Booster 7 and Ship 24 lifted off from the Starbase in Texas. The immense force of 16 million pounds from the 33 Raptor engines tore into the concrete pad, and blasted away chunks of concrete like missiles. Then as the rocket rose, millions of pounds of force ate into the ground and lifted soil that drifted in the air for miles.
Three engines died immediately as the rocket cleared the pad, possibly a result of the pad destruction. The rocket took off laterally. Then at 27 seconds into flight, another Raptor engine died in an explosion. Or a hydraulic power unit failed. In any case, at least three more Raptor engines died in flight. Subsequently at eighty-five seconds into flight, the rocket lost control authority. This triggered the flight termination system. Nevertheless, the vehicle continued to soar for 40 more seconds before exploding.
In hindsight, this failure ought to be no surprise. During the Apollo age, NASA built a 700,000 pound 58 foot wide and 450 feet long flame trench to vent the power. NASA further sprayed 300,000 gallons of water onto the Saturn 5 pad in the first forty seconds of liftoff to dull the lethal 220 decibels of sound radiating from the engines. The pad alone took three years to build. To put this in perspective, 220 decibels of noise is the equivalent of an explosion. A roaring jet engine is a modest 100 decibels in comparison.
SpaceX is aware of their earlier mistake. The word is that they are constructing a new pair of steel plates cooled by pressurized water for the next launch attempt. Possibly a steel pyramid to divert the flames?
But will this guarantee success on the next flight?
Even if this deflector ends the concrete storm, there is still the unresolved problem of reliability. During the age of Apollo, NASA built vast test stands to fire the Saturn 5 stages on for the full duration of their intended burn. I expect that SpaceX will have to do the same at some point to regress the complexities of firing all 33 engines on the booster.
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DataDrivenInvestor
Field Service Engineer with a passion for technology and entertaining readers.
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