Starship SN9 goes boom after a lovely launch and perfect flight

[PirateRo]

[Thekaspervote]

1. That must be a gut punch!

[PirateRo]

4. Yeah, i thought so, too

It failed similarly to sn8. The good thing is they have space to blow a few bucks on errors. They did the same with falcon 1 and with booster recovery.

The beauty is that these are software controlled machines. Once they figure it out, they will figure it out for the fleet.

[nocoincidences]

2. We've just got to work on that landing a little bit.

Ya think?

This struck me as so funny even though I know it isn't.

What a hopeful understatement!

[getagrip_already]

3. get your tickets! get your tickets here!

lol. Yeah, I know, just a test flight. But those last few feet make quite an impact.

[LiberalArkie]

5. It took Elon quite a white to stick the landings on the others. Maybe the next one won't

do an explosive disassembly.

[Mike 03]

6. Should these people be worried?

SpaceX announces first mission to space with all-civilian crew

The four-person expedition is expected to launch into orbit sometime in the fourth quarter of this year.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/spacex-announces-first-mission-space-all-civilian-crew-n1256390

Tech tycoon buys SpaceX flight to orbit, sets aside seats for sweepstakes winner (and a fellow techie)

https://www.geekwire.com/2021/tech-tycoon-buys-spacex-flight-orbit-sets-aside-seats-sweepstakes-winner-fellow-techie/

Maybe some of Space X's projects are further along than other. I couldn't be more excited about the private push into space, but just here on DU there have been a lot of posts showing these things exploding, usually when they attempt to land (though, luckily, not with people inside them), occasionally on take-off. In other videos, they perform flawlessly. How do you know which kind of flight you are getting on?

[PirateRo]

7. Probably not. The FAA and NASA will not let them fly without certification

The aerospace culture doesn’t like things to go boom but they will readily accept it exploding and crashing now than later during or after certification. It’s cost of doing business. It’s likelt they will crash a number of these before they get to a beta-version they might submit as a release candidate for certification.

There have been a number of changes, already. The one that upset me most was dropping the carbon tank in favor of this steel alloy. They need to revisit that decision, as far as I’m concerned. Ultimately, they expect to produce thousands of these machines.

[ZZenith]

8. Known in the business as a "RUD."

Rapid Unplanned Disassembly.

[PirateRo]

9. Ha! I was going with rapid, unplanned deceleration :)

[ZZenith]

10. It's an all-purpose acronym.

Known in the business as an “APA.”