The road to the moon and beyond to Mars.

[Legend]

8 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Two will stay in Orion.

 

It's going to be very interesting to see how all the Gateway + Starship HLS components work out. 

 

While the mission profile for the Orion modules are a very Apollo-like launch and free return trajectory - the Starship HLS will be launched by a Falcon Heavy into an earth orbit refuel of the Starship which then propels itself into the Gateway orbit.

 

Artemis IV is intended to include the International Habitation Module in the Gateway near-rectilinear halo orbit.

As a boy I was fascinated by the Apollo missions . In fact the first thing I saw on coloured television was an Apollo launch . I’ve kind of lost track of latest developments , so thanks for the above outline . 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

Elon and Spacex both tweeting conformation of third week of April.

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

https://www.spacex.com/launches/ 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

We have the FAA approval to fly,Monday is on for full stack launch........

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

Well the ship has been restacked on booster after the destruct system arming,lets hope all is good for a Monday launch.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[Flying Pig]

Scrubbed at t-40 seconds due to issues arising in, I think, the Super-Heavy booster earlier in the countdown.  The SpaceX commentary team say it will take at least 48 hours to recycle for another launch attempt.

[57xx]

6 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

Scrubbed at t-40 seconds due to issues arising in, I think, the Super-Heavy booster earlier in the countdown.

 

Yes, IIRC it was a problem with pressurising the booster. The launch was effectively scrubbed about 10mins before launch but they carried on the countdown to check all the processes as far as they could. They were going to go all the way down to t-10 just before ignition but decided to stop at a natural pause at t-40.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-test 

Its now targeted for 20th as they need to top up the tank farm to replace the lost fuels, and fix the valve that caused scrub.

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

 

[ERIC ALLTORQUE]

Elon Musk

@elonmusk

All systems currently green for launch

[Jeff Smith]

There is no perspective when looking at the stack but it is enormous, 9M in diameter, Starship is 50M long!

[Jeff Smith]

Well, quite a spectacular end to the flight a few minutes in.

 

It is quite an amazing technical challenge which will no doubt be eventually overcome.  The commentary from SpaceX seems very flippant.  The coverage opened with film of all the past achievements and failures.  Some main engines seemed not to be firing and when separation should have occurred the vehicle seemed to be spiralling.  No doubt we'll get an update in time.

[57xx]

My first thought was "that could have gone a lot worse", think N1 type failures. Even out of control it looked in control, impressive loop the loops without breaking apart. Hopefully they got plenty of useful data for the next flight.

[Flying Pig]

T-1min is at 38m55s into the video linked above.

[Jeff Smith]

There would seem to be quite a lot of launch pad damage.

[Jeff Smith]

It has not been stated by SpaceX whether the vehicle, which appeared to be still in one piece up until breakup, was destroyed by the autonomous self destruct system or broke up due to aerodynamic forces.

[Legend]

Very interesting . The euphoria was quite a contrast to the quiet controlled NASA Mission Control  we are used to .  Seems clearing the launch tower was their initial success point . 

[Reorte]

39 minutes ago, Legend said:

Very interesting . The euphoria was quite a contrast to the quiet controlled NASA Mission Control  we are used to .  Seems clearing the launch tower was their initial success point . 

Have to say I found all the hand waving and cheering a little, well creepy, as well as giving a somewhat amateurish appearance.

[57xx]

1 hour ago, Jeff Smith said:

It has not been stated by SpaceX whether the vehicle, which appeared to be still in one piece up until breakup, was destroyed by the autonomous self destruct system or broke up due to aerodynamic forces.

 

My guess is self destruct once it was clear that separation had failed, the engines were out of LOX by the time it exploded. It had already done quite a few manoeuvres that would have seen most other rocket fall to pieces so it looks pretty robust.