Watch Starship's launch debris pummel a poor minivan

[Shawn Knight]

In a nutshell: SpaceX attempted its first Starship orbital test flight this week following a canceled launch earlier in the week due to a frozen valve. To the surprise of many, the heavy-lift rocket made it off the launch pad and got a couple of minutes into its mission before things went south.

Starship reached a maximum altitude of 39 kilometers (about 24 miles) despite several of its Raptor engines failing shortly after launch. Unfortunately, Starship failed to separate from the Super Heavy booster. Shortly after, the flight termination system took over and the craft experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly.

Even with all the failures, the test was still deemed a success. SpaceX simply wanted to get Starship off the launch pad. Anything after clearing the tower was icing on the cake. The uncrewed test flight was not carrying a payload.

"As we promise, excitement is guaranteed," said John Insprucker, SpaceX's principal integration engineer.

Two things immediately stood out when watching the launch. First was the enormous size of Starship and the sheer amount of energy needed to break gravity's grip. The other was the huge debris field created by Starship, which SpaceX clearly didn't anticipate.

This clip from LabPadre highlights the incredible amount of energy generated as Starship lifted off.

Unfortunately for the nearby Dodge Caravan, it's probably destined for the scrap yard as its rear windows got blown out and the whole rear frame was caved in. It also appeared as if the security gate in the distance didn't survive the blast. Another shot from LabPadre shows the crater that Starship left under the launch pad.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration told The Wall Street Journal it will oversee an investigation into what went wrong during the flight. As is standard procedure, SpaceX will not be allowed to conduct another Starship flight until the FAA is satisfied it won't have an impact on public safety.

SpaceX said the test will help them improve Starship's reliability, and that they look forward to another flight in a few months.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98409-watch-starship-launch-debris-pummel-poor-minivan.html

 

[yRaz]

*reads car fax history report*
1 accident report, was in a collision with a star ship

if anything, this INCREASES the value of that car. Elon should buy it, paint a twitter logo on it and send it to Mars.

 

[RandomWAN]

And nothing of value was lost. It was a Dodge Caravan after all.

 

[m4a4]

If anyone wanted to see why they usually have flame diverters/trenches (whatever you want to call them), point and case lol

 

[p51d007]

Read Friday afternoon it was due to losing more than 6 of the 31 engines that altered the course too much.

 

[RudyBob]

Watching blast -offs as a kid was pure excitement. TV's would be pulled into the classroom and it was an event. I still get a thrill watching. I build and launch model rockets in my yard. What a rush.

 

[Plutoisaplanet]

The article made it sound like debris from the starship exploding pummeled a minivan and it wasn't until the second video I even understood what this article was about lol... That said, I know there was a radius no one was allowed to be in for safety reasons, and from other videos this was definitely in that radius. So that minivan was on a suicide mission as it is.

Here's another video from right at the radius (with a crazy amount of excitement from the hosts lmao):

EDIT: I stand corrected. It caused a legit dust storm. 5 miles away the hosts of the video actually had sand rained down on them and had to run inside lmao.

 

[nulll]

Watching it start to tumble I was really struck by the structural rigidity of the design as at a couple of points the whole vehicle was completely perpendicular to direction of travel near ~mach 2 at an altitude that must have put it close to max Q. While the vehicle was pretty far down range it really didn't appear to be experiencing much flexion.

With any luck Engineering explained will take up the challenging of breaking down the actual loading along the superstructure in comparison to the design limits.

 

[mrtraver]

*reads car fax history report*
1 accident report, was in a collision with a star ship

if anything, this INCREASES the value of that car. Elon should buy it, paint a twitter logo on it and send it to Mars.

He can't afford to buy it until he fires a few more people at Twitter and refuses to pay some more Twitter bills.

 

[yRaz]

He can't afford to buy it until he fires a few more people at Twitter and refuses to pay some more Twitter bills.

it took me a second to realize what you were saying, I imagined him literally firing people on a rocket at twitter.....

 

[shark975]

"As is standard procedure, SpaceX will not be allowed to conduct another Starship flight until the FAA is satisfied it won't have an impact on public safety."

Oh thank goodness, the gubt is on the case! I dont know about you guys but I feel safer already.

 

[passwordistaco]

experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly

You mean, "blew up".

 

[RigelOrionBeta]

"As is standard procedure, SpaceX will not be allowed to conduct another Starship flight until the FAA is satisfied it won't have an impact on public safety."

Oh thank goodness, the gubt is on the case! I dont know about you guys but I feel safer already.

The government is the one telling them they have to make sure this doesn't happen again.

Y'know, the instance of a private company severely underestimating the effected radius of a rocket launch.

Surely we should trust private companies to regulate themselves. History shows that is incredibly effective

 

[Kashim]

You mean, "blew up".

This reminds of The Simpsons episode where the nuclear power plant has a meltdown and Mr. Burns says "Oh, meltdown. It's one of these annoying buzzwords. We prefer to call it an unrequested fission surplus."

 

[kiwigraeme]

The article made it sound like debris from the starship exploding pummeled a minivan and it wasn't until the second video I even understood what this article was about lol... That said, I know there was a radius no one was allowed to be in for safety reasons, and from other videos this was definitely in that radius. So that minivan was on a suicide mission as it is.

Here's another video from right at the radius (with a crazy amount of excitement from the hosts lmao):

EDIT: I stand corrected. It caused a legit dust storm. 5 miles away the hosts of the video actually had sand rained down on them and had to run inside lmao.

Nah Van had best seats in the house

As an aside - took dogs out for a walk near a shooting range - someone was firing a high calibre rifle - anyone in the shooting shed would have needed to keep their earmuffs on at all times - 400 metres away from entrance was loud as hell ( I was kind of directly behind and across road )

 

[amghwk]

They clapped when it took off. They also clapped when it exploded disastrously. Humans...

 

[Vulcanproject]

The Soviet Union would be proud of such a carefree attitude to safety. Harks back to the good old days of the N1 blowing up while panicked people run about.

 

[Hardware Geek]

I suspect they parked it there hoping it would be destroyed. Insurance companies will have to start updating their policies to exclude "Acts of Elon".

 

[Kwerpi]

The unscrewed test flight was not carrying a payload.

Nah, the test flight was definitely screwed.

 

[Hodor]

First they failed to launch.
This time they had an erection, but it lasted only 4 minutes.

(tho some would say: "More than enough")

 

[meltedsnake]

And nothing of value was lost. It was a Dodge Caravan after all.

All 80s and 90s kids should eagerly celebrate the loss of any Chrysler minivan for the benefit of younger generations. My family had the 88 Grand Caravan and, then, a fancy '94 T&C; we called them Woody and Buzz. Both were steaming piles of failure, and we looked with jealously upon the rich kids at our private school who showed up in full-size Suburbans with conversion packages. My dad finally got my mom a 2000 Durango with the big V8, but it was even worse, nearly throwing the wheels after the ball bearings gave out en route. That was the end of my dad's Chrysler experiment.

 

[yellownumber5]

Curious, how would a rocket this size do if it was launched from a silo? That seems a lot of wasted energy.

I've had a lot of rockets in Kerbal Space Program do this exact (unscheduled) flip. I pretty much knew right away that it was never gonna right itself again.

 

[sreams]

You mean, "blew up".

To be even more accurate... was intentionally blown up. The flight termination system was activated (per the FAA) after stage separation didn't happen.

 

[sreams]

I suspect they parked it there hoping it would be destroyed. Insurance companies will have to start updating their policies to exclude "Acts of Elon".

The van belonged to NasaSpaceFlight. They left it there intentionally as a home for their camera setup.

 

[DaveBG]

Another historic thing this chap made