SpaceX Starship Test Rocket Was Knocked Over By High Winds (popularmechanics.com)

Strong Texas winds managed to knock over SpaceX's prototype of its next-generation Starship rocket. In a tweet, CEO Elon Musk tweeted yesterday: "50 mph winds broke the mooring blocks late last night & fairing was blown over. Will take a few weeks to repair." He added: "Actual [fuel] tanks are fine." Popular Mechanics reports: The hopper, based out of the company's launch site in Boca Chica, Texas, is not meant for the stars: It is a test machine meant to show that the Starship's fundamentals can work in terms of launching and landing. SpaceX wants the rocket to go 16,400 feet into the air (a hop, so to speak) and land again. The wind, sadly, had other plans and knocked the hopper's nosecone around.

The accident appears to have first reached the public through eagle-eyed SpaceX aficionados on a message board which updates with even the smallest changes in anything related to the company's plans. Their methods include everything from drone flyovers to driving by the site. It's hard to tell what damage has precisely happened to the hopper in its fall, but it appears to be more complex than simply righting back up again.

Comments

The hand of God

[jfdavis668]

came down and smited thee.

Re:The hand of God

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't that thing at Burning Man a couple of years ago?

Re:The hand of God

[jfdavis668]

Who can remember what happened at Burning Man?

Re:The hand of God

[Anonymous Coward]

smote

This almost happened to Rotary Rocket

[PhantomHarlock]

Back in the 90s during the first wave of NewSpace companies, the Rotary Rocket Roton ATV (Atmopsheric Test Vehicle - similar mission plan as this one) had a grand unveiling on a very typically windy Mojave day. Had the tanks not been ballasted with water it would have toppled over. Was an interesting day for many reasons.

Re:This almost happened to Rotary Rocket

[Bruce Perens]

I went inside of the Rotron one day in Mojave about 10 years ago. It was standing on display next to a video kiosk, and they put the PC controlling the kiosk in the rotron, and that day the PC guy had left the door on the bottom of the Rotron unlocked. Of course some things could have been removed from the Rotron by then, but the inside was hollow. A few small tanks, and the control cab way up where I couldn't reach it. Birds were nesting in it.

Re:This almost happened to Rotary Rocket

[Bruce Perens]

So far, SpaceX are the only folks we can trust to even have manned flights. Orion is an albatross about NASA's neck and needs to be cancelled ASAP. NASA should no longer make its own rockets. Takes 10 times as long and 100 times as expensive, and they killed their share of astronauts with really stupid stuff. Every time was "go fever" and acceptance of known problems with the craft that should have stopped flight. Did you know the tank stirrer that blew up the SM in Apollo 13 was already scheduled to be removed from future vehicles? Boeing may get their stuff together eventually with CST-100. Blue Origin is still suborbital-only for years. Sierra Nevada is going really slowly. I don't think you can judge SpaceX's preparation for mann

Re:This almost happened to Rotary Rocket

[Bruce Perens]

Oops. That should say: I don't think you can judge SpaceX's preparation for manned flights by this sort of demo.

Re:This almost happened to Rotary Rocket

[Rei]

Are you for real? This is a test article. The sort of thing you normally paint in yellow-and-black crosshatched crash testing paint. It'll be a miracle if this thing survives to the end of the testing period, by design. Its only purpose is to be something quickly and cheaply built to collect data for the actual rocket.

And what was destroyed was simply the fairing (read: nosecone), not the actual rocket part (tankage, plumbing, engines, etc). The fairing is far lighter (just very thin sheet steel tacked onto a lightweight frame), and thus vulnerable to winds. The base, while it has the same sheet steel tacked on, is built around a heavy steel framework designed for holding liquids. They may look aesthetically similar, but they're very different.

Remember that everything you're seeing here only started being built in December. This is not some sort of two-year setback.

Re:Stock pump con

[Anonymous Coward]

IDK. Maybe because he can land a rocket when the rest of us can't even do a water bottle flip.

Re:Stock pump con

[Rockoon]

IDK. Maybe because he can land a rocket when the rest of us can't even do a water bottle flip.

I still need to go see a launch and landing. I know for a fact that no matter how prepared I make myself, the sheer amount of energy released for the take off, the noise and rumbling still felt a mile away, that I will still be in complete awe.

Re:Stock pump con

[Ol Olsoc]

IDK. Maybe because he can land a rocket when the rest of us can't even do a water bottle flip.

I still need to go see a launch and landing. I know for a fact that no matter how prepared I make myself, the sheer amount of energy released for the take off, the noise and rumbling still felt a mile away, that I will still be in complete awe.

They are awesome indeed. The delay between the start of the launch and the arrival of the sound is cool too. The first launch I saw was at around 0300, and even that has cool stuff like the mini-fireworks display when the first stage separates. That should be on everyone's bucket list.

Duh

[Ecuador]

Well, duh, it wasn't built to withstand winds - there's no air in space! :-O

Re:Duh

[mentil]

But there are solar winds.

Re:Duh

[4im]

There may not be air / wind in space, but what about the one destination for BFR that's being talked about so much - i.e. Mars? There's an atmosphere (thin maybe), there's wind, there are sandstorms. What will those do to a freshly landed BFR not weighted down with loads of fuel?

While it may not be like in "The Martian", some calculations are warrented to be on the safe side.

Re:Duh

[Gavagai80]

The harshest winds Mars can offer wouldn't tip over an empty hopper faring. You'd barely feel it. A 100 MPH wind on Mars feels nothing like a 100 MPH wind on Earth because there's only 1/100th of the air blowing.

Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[Bruce Perens]

I am a big fan of Elon Musk, Tesla, and SpaceX. That said, this is the most half-assed project I've seen them do, and that includes the Monty-Python-esque brick tower constructed for Boring company for which they advertised a position for someone to be at the top and yell abuse in an outrageous french accent. I assume this person was in the Tesla lay-offs.

Its construction was like that of a film set, and like a film set it got blown over in the first high wind. Inside there is a triangular truss structure like that on one of those overhead signs that spans a wide highway. This is the only structural component. Hung off of that is crinkly thin stainless steel skin attached to a structure made out of rebar. I kid you not. So, the skin has the approximate wind profile that it should (oops!) and most importantly, it looks cool!

Well, not as cool as a real space rocket.

Now, I know the job of this other than looking cool is to allow them to test the landing guidance software with the approximately right sized object, and these things tend to blow up and crash so it's OK to make it to be disposable. But they have now learned that you need a hurricane-proof building if you are going to do this on the extreme south coast of Texas right on the water! Or at least guy wires.

I'm sure they'll have another one in less than two months. It'll be interesting seeing it "hop".

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[Strider-]

An least according to one tweet, the thing broke loose from its anchor blocks. So it looks like they did secure it, it's just that it overwhelmed the anchoring system.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[Bruce Perens]

It wasn't attached to the bottom of the rocket, though, which is bolted to concrete. I'm not sure it was even standing, it might have been already on its side for installation of the tank bulkheads, which had been seen there recently. That would have been a really weak position to be in the wind.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[sysrammer]

Thanks Bruce. About the only non-troll to respond. Trolls can be fun, but most fail at it nowadays.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[argee]

Indeed, guy wires. Or, even guy ropes. On my self supporting ham radio tower, it used to sway 3 ft at the top. Alarming. So I put in a set of 3 ropes,
just 3/8 diameter. I used non-stretch rope. Sway now only 12" of less. And less jerky. About $50.

I envision 3 ropes on that rocket. When its time to launch, just cut them off at ground level and let them dangle. They will vaporize in no time. Of course,
rocket scientists are going to have apoplexy over this suggestion.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[argee]

Your comment, sir, is rude and inappropriate.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[Bruce Perens]

SpaceX actually has a high-load cable system that can hold down the rocket with all engines firing. This is in a lot of photos of static fire tests at their engine test site in Macgregor, Texas. They put it on and take it off with a crane.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[Rei]

You seem to be confused.

1) You could never put this thing on its side; it's not designed to bear loads like that. At least not without building some sort of temporary internal scaffolding first.
2) The part that fell over is the fairing. You don't install bulkheads in a fairing. It's just thin tacked stainless sheet - you can't support liquid with that.
3) They're already installing the bulkheads in the actual tankage section (the bottom part). Top bulkhead just went on.

The simple matter is, they're doing everything here at a crazy pace. Could they have slowed down everything to reduce the risk of unanticipated events like this? Sure. They could crawl along like NASA does and not even make a tack until it's been signed off in triplicate by half a dozen managers. But this is a test article, something designed to be cheap and disposable. Delays just aren't worthwhile. They only started building this thing a month and a half ago. Even if the entire thing had been razed to the ground, they'd have only lost a month and a half of work.

The only thing I fault SpaceX for here is not painting it in a yellow-and-black crosshatched crash testing paint scheme so that the general public realizes, "We expect this thing not to survive our testing". ;) When people see a shiny rocket-shaped thing, they expect it to be an actual finished rocket.

Re:Let's be clear about this: it's half-assed

[Gavagai80]

The cost of fixing the damage is likely far less than the cost of a hurricane-proof building.

Re:Stock pump con

[Bruce Perens]

Launch viewing is a frustrating hobby. I drove 5 hours to Vandenberg for the last launch, it scrubbed in the last seconds of the countdown due to a hydrogen leak. Drove 5 hours back home. For one SpaceX launch there, it was so foggy that I only heard it. Expect to see one for every three that you go to.

It looks like the first Crew Dragon demo is on the 9th, during Orlando Hamcation, so I'll be in Florida. Hope that works out. I saw the Falcon Heavy launch that way last year.

Mental picture

[DaMattster]

I had the mental picture of Wil E. Coyote all frustrated that his Acme-brand super duper rocket got blown over.

Re:Stock pump con

[Ol Olsoc]

Launch viewing is a frustrating hobby. I drove 5 hours to Vandenberg for the last launch, it scrubbed in the last seconds of the countdown due to a hydrogen leak. Drove 5 hours back home. For one SpaceX launch there, it was so foggy that I only heard it. Expect to see one for every three that you go to.

It looks like the first Crew Dragon demo is on the 9th, during Orlando Hamcation, so I'll be in Florida. Hope that works out. I saw the Falcon Heavy launch that way last year.

Hi Bruce, yes indeed frustrating. A couple years back, the Wife and I were in Florida for winter vacation. The F9 launch was delayed, I think three times, and since it was going to the Space Station, the launch time window was moved back by around two hours each time. I didn't get much sleep that week.

Have fun at Hamcation - I like it much better than Dayton, now Xenia.

Shiny

[AndyKron]

So Shiny

Re:Shiny

[Rei]

On purpose. The reentry system being tested for Starship is very different from any other ever used. Normally the goal is to radiate heat, so you want a high emissivity (generally black) material. Starship (the actual vehicle, not this test hopper) on the other hand is designed to never get excessively hot in the first place - a double-layer skin with liquid between the layers and the outer layer perforated by tiny holes, through which heated coolant can vaporize out (creating a protective boundary layer while simultaneously removing heat). So the goal is to reject heat rather than absorb-then-radiate it. This means a low emissivity material, which generally means "shiny". :)

It's still going to get tremendously hot, of course - the craft is being designed for direct aerocapture from MTO. So alumium is right out. But stainless is such a great material for so many reasons... most of which is its resilience. Something which carbon fibre isn't, and a big reason I was very apprehensive about SpaceX's original BFR design. It's also 1/50th the cost, comparably easy to work with, and people who know how to do so are a dime a dozen. It's strong, very inert (even in hostile environments), and with the right alloy retains its resilience even at cryogenic temperatures, while its tensile strength only grows. I'm very happy with the switch. Heck, it's even higher-Z, meaning it'll be more effective at blocking solar radiation (won't do much against GCR except kick off secondary radiation, but GCR is a far lower flux).

Re:Well

[Anonymous Coward]

Donald Trump is a genione fool that will end funding for all things science & progress.

Dude, didn't you read the story about Trump wanting to provide NASA with "unlimited funding" to get a man on Mars before the end of his presidency?

So much Trump Derangement Syndrome...

Re:Hey, I saw that

[argee]

I used to watch Flash Gordon as a kid! Rockets looked like V2's. And as they went thru space, the sparks out the back would drop down, and the
smoke would go up! I bet the NASA scientists cannot duplicate that yet!

Re: Well

[Rei]

What was knocked over was an empty, shiny shell. It was the fairing that was knocked over (read: "giant nosecone"). Not the tanks / plumbing / engines / etc (the business end). This is amplified by the fact that unlike with the actual Starship, this hopper's fairing will never face meaningful stress or heating. They could outright launch without it (although it'll be good to explore how it affects the vehicle's handling dynamics).

When initial construction started, people presumed SpaceX was building a water tower. That portion is the "business end", the actual rocket. Because when you build a rocket (aka, a device that's mostly tankage for holding liquids) the size of a water tower, out of steel, it's inherently going to resemble a water tower until you start sticking engines and a fairing on it ;) SpaceX started building two other pieces (which were eventually joined together) under the the tent, which are just tacked sheet steel on a frame; their shape was peoples' first clue that there was a rocket being built (although it took a while for people to put two and two together and realize that the "water tower" was the base). It's this fairing that fell over.

Re: Stock pump con

[c6gunner]

Personally I'm waiting for the first flight of the BFG (or whatever they are calling it these days). Figure I'll take a 2 week holiday, drive down, and get a hotel somewhere in the area. If they scrub enough times to outlast my 2 week stay, they've got some serious problems.

Re:Well

[r1348]

Yeah, but only if they can get a man on the moon by the end of his term, which is ludicrous.

Re:Obligatory

[Thud457]

When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a rocket on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It blew over. So I built a second one. And that one sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you'e going to get, Son, the strongest rocket in all of Texas.

Re:Well

[cellocgw]

Yeah, but only if they can get a man on the moon by the end of his term, which is ludicrous.

So you're saying NASA needs to incorporate a P100D into their Mars rocket?

D'oh

[White Yeti]

"But there's an Air in Space Museum" -- Homer