Vocal Voices

But let us not be too quick to jump to a conclusion that this is a failure - it is, but it isn't.

If these things are going to happen, and they will, it is better they happen early on so that things can be learned from them and improvements be made. That is much better than them happening on a manned mission.

We have a saying: "It's not rocket science" when things are relatively easy and that's because rocket science is damned hard.

So, SpaceX can now take time go over the data to try to identify and solved the problem, then go again. Next time they might prove another saying: "Third time lucky." One thing is certain and that is that one day they will succeed.

Aeronautics and Astronautics are complicated stuff. I know, and I was only a technician.

History shows us that with every new development things go wrong - in all endeavours. With flight we went from biplanes to monoplanes, piston engines and propellers to jets, sub-sonic to super-sonic, atmospheric to space. Every step put a new layer of complexity on the last.

The transition from each step brought disasters, but we learned from them, that's how flight became one of the safest ways to travel.

Those boundaries are still being pushed and we are still learning, as SpaceX is finding out. I am tempted to speculate that some of these so-called failures are knowingly built in to the physical developments in order to discover what can and what can't be done. Not everything can be modelled, but we can have millisecond real time data from actual flights to help us solve today's problems and improve tomorrow's tech to build for the future.

I’m afraid the fact that billions are spent on Spacex doesn’t sit well with me, when so much could be done in the world with that money.

WM, Mrs S reads the DM regularly and as a result she hates Musk. Today I had to listen to a whole diatribe about how useless the launch was.

I knew you would see it differently.

As you know I watch this stuff daily. I have been waiting for this launch for 6 months with keen anticipation.

When the first flight test launched Elon had set a target of clearing the launch mount and tower before blowing up because destroying both would cost them 6-9 months of work.

In fact it didn't blow the tower up but it did seriously damage it and force them to redesign it and it cost them 4 months of work.

That being said, had they waited and put in the "shower head" flame diverted, the launch would have destroyed it with, potentially, an even greater delay. This is because they learned that the ground under the launch mount could not support 17.5 million lbs of thrust.

Had they put in the flame diverted it could have cost them up to 18 months delay.

In the launch, yesterday, the ground equipment (stage 0)., was basically undamaged.

During the first launch the rocket lost control because 7 of the engines flamed out and a good 3 of them were flight control gimballing rockets. This made the rocket tumble in space.

The flight termination system was too slow to fire and it didn't immediately destroy the rocket because the metal was too strong for it.

So the rocket failed to send off the second stage and eventually blew up.

This time all 33 raptors fired and continued to fire for 2.5 minutes which was the time to send the second stage off.

It then shut off 30 of the booster raptors and "hot staged" the second stage by firing the ships raptors whilst still connected. This was a first for SpaceX and worked perfectly.

The booster used thrusters and engines to turn away from the ship and start to prepare for it's boost back burn. It was in process of reigniting about 5 more rocket engines when the termination system triggered the self destruct because it thought it was out of control. The FTS worked perfectly and blew it up instantly.

Ship 25 continued on its way with all 6 rockets burning perfectly for the additional 6.5 minutes they were supposed to. The ship passed over the space barrier at 90km and continued on to 148km in altitude, the target altitude for the single orbit. Reaching a speed of 24,000km/h it cut the engines off.

Again the FTS assumed it had lost control and blew the ship to bits.

Effectively SpaceX rectified the stage 0 issues. Rectified the raptors not igniting. Achieved a first time hot staging and the beginning of the boost back for soft landing on the sea.

The ship made it to space and was ready to orbit the earth when the FTS blew it to bits. Although we do know that some of the thermal tiles fell off on launch and it would have burned up on reentry. So that w as no real loss.

Also inadvertently, I'm sure, they proved that the flight termination systems now work perfectly for ship and booster.

The only data SpaceX missed out on was the ballistic orbit and the reentry. It was not going to try to land, the intention was a ballistic crash into the sea destroying the ship.

This was a major, major win for SpaceX and it looks like the two fixes needed for the next launch are FTS sensitivity and thermal tile fixing. These are not major issues for SpaceX.

There are two more boosters in testing and 4 more ships going through testing.

I expect SpaceX to make fast progress now it is easy for the FAA to give new launch licenses.