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Comment by evgen | Hacker News Reader

Boom. That spin at the end looked quite bad. Can't believe it took that long for FTS to end things.

> Can't believe it took that long for FTS to end things.

There's no reason to activate the Flight Termination System until it leaves the launch corridor and safety becomes a factor. It's a test launch, you want to gather as much data as possible, even if the test doesn't go as you hoped.

The launch sent shivers down my spine and made me a cry a bit. What a sight to behold!

It's good to know that I am not the only one who gets a little choked up about spaceflight. Yes, we have many things we need to do on this planet - but, we cannot keep all of our eggs in one single basket - humanity needs to reach for the solar system, then the stars.

Same. Seeing the rocket clear the launchpad and race humanity towards the heavens... amazing stuff from SpaceX, the entire Starship program is a fraction of NASA and other space agencies' annual budgets yet SpaceX continues to conjure the future.

I tuned in late and was just about to rewind to the takeoff when it blew up... Oh well, with the speed they've developed this, I'm sure the next attempt won't take long.

Didn't look to me like FTS. I think that was aerodynamic forces once the altitude got low enough.

Normally you only activate FTS if it looks like it might leave the launch envelope.

It was spinning around in circles. Rockets don't recover from that. Anyone who thought the rocket might stay in the launch envelope is crazy.

Every second it spins is more test data. I would be surprised if they used the FTS.

Yes, but still, blowing it up too soon would mean collecting less data, and the more data you have to "debug" the issue that obviously happened, the better.

They want to gather as much data as they can for as long as they can as long as the rocket is inside the envelope.

There’s no need to blow up your science experiment until it’s actually a danger, even if you’re certain it will soon become a danger.

This could be the only flight where they get data on actual aerodynamic forces during a spin. It's crazy expensive to test that again so might as well make the most of it.

why is everyone cheering ?

Because it achieved the primary objectives.

It cleared launch pad which was the most important goal.

Starship didn't blow up on the launch pad. That's a success during development.

What the launch did do to the launch area is going to be an interesting story to follow.

The LabPadre rover cam at 8:33 was... exciting... large chunks of things falling everywhere.

I thought you meant from the exploded rocket. So I went to T +8.33 to find the falling debris at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbBeoReu12E

Then i re-read your comment...

Anything above getting it off the ground is considered a success for this test.

Getting it off the ground was the goal apparently

the cheering throughout the whole thing was extremely annoying and completely unnecessary

Those are people that have worked hard to get to this point. I don't fault them for being excited and having some fun with it. Feel like they earned it.

Indeed. that wasn't the issue. Issue was that the coverage of the launch was dominated by it. I love watching launches, find it relaxing, exciting and extremely thought provoking about our place in the cosmos. I also love watching live sport. but not at the same time.

Fan support is always important. It gives an extra boost to the players

Because it was a test launch. The whole point is to get data so it doesn't do that when you launch real cargo.

Apparently anything more than clearing the launch pad was a win. Musk's dead stare seems to disagree tho

When it exploded it was already very clear that stage separation had failed previously. So the disappointing part was 10-20 seconds before, the final explosion was inevitable, and well it was an explosion so it looked nice.

It surviving far enough to (hopefully) have a good amount of data on what might have caused the failure of the stage separation already with the first test flight is pretty great.

Getting into the air and having an obvious failure last that long -- meaning the automated abort didn't think it would escape the cleared area until then -- rather than make it explode immediately means a lot of data to make the next launch better.

That is American positive thinking. Usually really good for motivation, but sometimes annoying and hard to read for us non-US people.

SpaceX gives you an audio feed of onlookers who act like rabbid fans at a rock concert and only patches audio of the control room when they find it convenient. It's extremely annoying but you get used to it.

Surreal. Cheering after a failure and forced smiles with shaky voices from moderators afterwards.

Still getting data until you need to boom it

Is it normal that 5 or 6 out of 33 engines didn't ignite?

Looking at the footage it might seem that some of them exploded or failed during flight.

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