Watch Starship's launch debris pummel a poor minivan

[RandomWAN]

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

It's still more effective than trusting government to regulate itself.

 

[netman]

Well, the crowd got what they were looking for, a blasted excitement and cheered when starship exploded...!

 

[mbrowne5061]

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

Because the rocket had started to tumble, because motors on the first stage were failing one after another and leading to the whole system becoming unstable. If the flight termination system is activated, that just means its going to blow up anyway - they're just going to pre-empt it while its still high up.

 

[sreams]

Because the rocket had started to tumble, because motors on the first stage were failing one after another and leading to the whole system becoming unstable. If the flight termination system is activated, that just means its going to blow up anyway - they're just going to pre-empt it while its still high up.

Sure. My point was that the explosion that actually occurred was not directly caused by a failure. Although a failure did lead to decision to activate the system.

I'd also point out that the failures that lead to that point were almost certainly caused by kicked-up concrete compromising multiple systems, and not by any flaw in the vehicle itself.

 

[hwertz]

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.

Yup. See you in hell Grand Caravans. They had a choice of a wheezy 2.2L (underpowered but solid) or 2.5L 4-cylinder engine (which was prone to blowing head gaskets), massively underpowered while still getting crap gas mileage... I think they got rid of this choice by late 1980s; a 3.0L Mitsubishi SOHC V6 which would have the valve seals go at about 100,000 miles so it'd burn massive amounts of oil (I had a Plymouth Acclaim with one of them, but the previous owner had already rebuilt the engine with upgraded seals when I got it..).. if you've ever seen a Caravan with clouds of oil smoke pouring out every time it takes off from a stop, it's got the 3.0L (and the reason you'd see so many is it got good power and good MPG, and as long as they didn't run it out of oil it was reliable too). And the 3.8L, where they did not put in a strong enough transmission so it'd shred through transmissions.

 

[meltedsnake]

Yup. See you in hell Grand Caravans. They had a choice of a wheezy 2.2L (underpowered but solid) or 2.5L 4-cylinder engine (which was prone to blowing head gaskets), massively underpowered while still getting crap gas mileage... I think they got rid of this choice by late 1980s; a 3.0L Mitsubishi SOHC V6 which would have the valve seals go at about 100,000 miles so it'd burn massive amounts of oil (I had a Plymouth Acclaim with one of them, but the previous owner had already rebuilt the engine with upgraded seals when I got it..).. if you've ever seen a Caravan with clouds of oil smoke pouring out every time it takes off from a stop, it's got the 3.0L (and the reason you'd see so many is it got good power and good MPG, and as long as they didn't run it out of oil it was reliable too). And the 3.8L, where they did not put in a strong enough transmission so it'd shred through transmissions.

Chrysler owned and was producing the 4.0L Jeep/AMC inline 6 at the time. Gas mileage would have been pitiful, but at least the vans would have had some grunt and acceleration, and, most importantly, unquestionable reliability. The last few iterations of that engine could have been put to many uses other than Cherokees and Wranglers; the results certainly would have been better than Chrysler's 80s/90s V-6s.