Article is referencing another[0] which mentions "grounded" but not "indefinitely" and doesn't cite its sources.
The only thing cited (in this article) is:
> An anomaly occurred during the ascent and prior to stage separation resulting in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA will oversee the mishap investigation of the Starship / Super Heavy test mission.”
Which is normal - I'd expect nothing less. You'd be crazy to allow further flights (of anything) until you have a full understanding of what happened.
But of course, that doesn't have the same nice sting as "grounded indefinitely".
From a strict reading of the words, Starship was to be grounded "indefinitely" regardless of the outcome of the launch.
The launch license was for only 1 launch. They need to get another one to launch again, which will take an indeterminate amount of time, and isn't technically guaranteed to ever be granted.
I'd imagine it's grounded until SpaceX can at least demonstrate the next launchpad won't rain down on their neighbors.
There seems to be a lot of things that went wrong in this launch, and the FAA will want to see those issues investigated, from engine failures at launch, to the disintegrating launchpad, all the way to a possible malfunction of the flight termination system, because it seems the rocket disassembled itself before the FTS could do its job in a controlled way.
'Users dug up an October 2020 tweet from Musk in which he posted that SpaceX wouldn’t build a flame diverter on the launchpad, but acknowledged that “it could turn out to be a mistake.”'
How much it would have cost to build a flame diverter?
I think the main issue is that marshland is really unsuited to building large underground structures.
I think they should have considered an above ground flame diverter - which would have been far cheaper. It would consist of a simple pyramid below the rocket.
For a layman like me, it looks as if it already has a flame diverter. The rocket stands so high above the ground that flames go down and spread to the sides, but it was not enough.
The main part that may be missing is a flame deflector, a kind of inverted 'v' structure that would redirect the momentum of the exhaust to the sides (where a horizontal concrete slab might redirect it back up to the vehicle). With the vehicle up on the OLM you could maybe also make the deflector 3 dimensional and build a sort of inverted cone. Spreading exhaust in all directions could disperse the energy more quickly, although I'm not sure if you want to necessarily redirect exhaust toward, say, the tower base or the tank farm.
If they add both a trench and a deflector that gives them some degree of control of where the exhaust goes once it leaves the underside of the rocket, so you could lead it away from critical pad infrastructure and direct it out to some empty area to disperse. Obviously all that requires quite a bit of space, which they might not have available.
The other part that was missing was a water deluge system (it has some - see below). With the water deluge, it would help muffle the sound (currently 6 miles away gets windows blown out) and make it harder for any material that is kicked up to go anywhere (up or out) as it would also have to go through several hundred thousand gallons of water too.
I think the problem was that the big concrete pad needed expansion joints. Those joints should have been angled such that when the pad is in use the venturi effect caused the concrete slabs to be sucked towards the ground.
However, this wasn't the case - the joints were vertical (as would be normal for laying a parking lot), and the end result was exhaust gasses went through the joints and lifted the slabs up, causing many of them to get blown away.
Any time you "ground" something it is going to be indefinite--until the problem is fixed. What, are they going to say "take a 2 week break and then you're back in business."
It’s not quite business as usual due to the alarming and unexpected amount of possibly toxic dust that spread all throughout that area of the state, as noted on the article.
Unsurprising, but they wouldn't be able to launch another anyway anytime soon, as their first one destroyed the launchpad.
Not having a trench and sound suppression was, unsurprisingly, a mistake, and the lack of those may have caused the crash in the first place.
And I doubt the water-cooled steel base would be much better at anything but preventing chunks of concrete from hitting the engines and their support systems.
> Broken windows and ash-like particulate matter from the launch have been reported as far away as Port Isabel, a town of about 5,000 people six miles away from the launchpad, and South Padre Island, where onlookers watched the test flight from about five miles away.
> Spokespeople for the Sierra Club and the Center for Biological Diversity noted that the particulate emissions may be unsafe to touch or breathe in, and samples will need to be collected and examined to dispel any concerns.
I assume there are attorneys salivating at this. (If the concerns are legit, then good.)
A commenter in a previous HN thread pointed out that the dust could cause silicosis, but another commenter who watched the flight in person mentioned that he saw no evidence of dust or damage during his drive out.
This article has no reasoning, investigation, or background information on previous groundings - just quotes cherry-picked to suggest a particular outcome. Did SpaceX screw the pooch, or is this business as usual? I can't decide, but I did really enjoy this quote:
"[no proof] ... but environmental groups are holding judgment until a full investigation can be completed."
The FAA should be investigating itself for allowing the launch at all. No flame trench for the most powerful rocket of all time? The launch pad destruction was so severe that it destroyed the rocket's own engines and damaged cars half a mile away.
For a substantial portion of its flight, a spacecraft is an aircraft. A first stage like the Super Heavy doesn't even necessarily exit the atmosphere. Super-Heavy's intended MECO & stage separation is 65km, well below the accepted 100km "edge of space" definition. Super-Heavy is an aircraft, Starship is both an aircraft and a spacecraft.
I must say, at the very least, I find the contrast is rather funny.
New organisations were parroting SpaceX's euphemism of a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, to the extent there was a headline saying it was “actually good news”[1]. Whilst there will be lessons learnt, and it’s obviously not easy to launch rockets, this doesn’t scream unequivocally good news.
> We would build multiple layers of fuel oxidizer, and then, we would get a run long enough up to really do something. We’d get a really exciting event. I deemed it “pre-unplanned disassembly” at the time. That problem really went away when we learned a little bit about fuel control and kept injectors and propellant temperatures a little warmer.
Same as with Tesla, you test new algorithms in production and deny the consequences. Someone believes that you can do Agile development with safety critical systems that involves real lives and severe consequences.
I’ve been packed for Mars since 2021. Now the government won’t let me move there like Elon promised. Starship is ready to start taking colonists and some stupid federal agency screws it up.
The only thing cited (in this article) is:
> An anomaly occurred during the ascent and prior to stage separation resulting in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA will oversee the mishap investigation of the Starship / Super Heavy test mission.”
Which is normal - I'd expect nothing less. You'd be crazy to allow further flights (of anything) until you have a full understanding of what happened.
But of course, that doesn't have the same nice sting as "grounded indefinitely".
[0] https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/20/spacex-starship-exp...