17 thoughts on “On The Road Again”

  1. IFT-10 upper stage exploded on the test stand during fueling. Proximate cause was failure of a nitrogen COV in the payload bay. I think these are still a bought item, not made in-house. Remember CRS-7? There are two V.2 Starships left, then it goes to V.3.

      1. No official report. Lots of photos from ground / river and air. Damage is substantial, will probably take a couple of months at least to fix.

        Elon Musk posted “Tis but a scratch”.

        1. The main test stand structure looks intact as does the nearby tankage. Not surprising as the test stand is massive and it’s pretty hard to damage a thick tank full of cryogens with a fire – even a big one. There was a lot of small-gauge hardware that got mauled, but that shouldn’t take long to replace. I think fix time will be closer to a couple of weeks than a couple of months.

          1. Yes, I have. And on timelines, at least, your old post holds up pretty well. Far better than much of the comment response, most of which has not aged nearly as well, though there are people, even now, saying many of the same things or worse – go figure.

            I did not anticipate two years worth of blunders anent GSE, for example – a subject about which I was anything but “optimistic” at the time. There was also a non-trivial amount of deliberate slow-rolling of regulatory matters during the ghastly and petty Biden regime.

            That said, Starship development has certainly hit a rough patch these last few months. But it’s worth noting that the four recent failures have all had quite different root causes and none have been repeated. That is a signal advantage of the test-frequently-and-break-stuff hardware-rich approach. More problems than anticipated have been found. It is not obvious that any of them would have been avoided though doing a subscale vehicle first or doing years of ground-based analysis and ground tests ala NASA and the legacy primes. The ability to plow through problems quickly, even if only to run into yet more, still means the program will reach some sort of operational capability more quickly than via any alternative route of march.

            Starship will be late because it already is. How much later it will get is unknowable at the moment. The sun could come out tomorrow or we could find there are additional significant bugs that raise their heads on subsequent test flights. The one thing I am certain of is that what SpaceX wants to achieve with Starship does not run afoul of any fundamental laws of physics. Therefore, SpaceX will succeed with Starship at some point.

            Being my ever-optimistic self, I think things will look rather different, and better, by year’s end.

  2. John, you’ve always said it was too big, so nothing new.

    As for Masseys, it’s blown flat (mostly tanks) but the test stand itself looks okay. But IT DOESN’T MATTER. The test stand only works with V.2, so it’s obsolete. There are only two V.2 Starships left.

    Based on the claims of a whistle blower on X, Gwynne Shotwell and the entire upper stage unit need to be called to account. If true, of course. People say, “the grownups are in charge,” but in company after company, the “grownups” of middle management and HR fuck things up over and over. Boeing, anyone? Time to put the genius back in charge and stop hating on him because “Orange Man Bad.”

    1. Agreed. Things at Tesla seem to be going well so Elon should have more bandwidth to devote to SpaceX. Among the major to-do list items is to get someone new in place at Starbase to replace the retired Kathy Lueders. I, personally, would like to see Jared Isaacman offered the job – and I understand he’s available these days.

      I pay no attention to so-called “whistleblowers” at SpaceX. There have been a number of them over the years and nothing they alleged has ever been seen to pan out.

  3. I don’t take the comments of most people here seriously either. As for the whistle blower, this one is a little different from the usual Glass Door pissing and moaning. He makes specific accusations of malfeasance and begs Musk to listen. Look it up on X or don’t. Not my monkeys, etc.

    1. I can’t find anything like what you describe on X or via any search engine I’ve tried. All that comes up are ancient stories about labor issues at SpaceX, which have all been subsequently adjudicated in SpaceX’s favor, and some NLRB employee who claims DOGE stole data of some sort. That was back in April. And I don’t know how a current or former NLRB staffer complaining about DOGE could be fairly described as a “SpaceX whistleblower.” If you have a link to something that isn’t any of the preceding nonsense, please post. Otherwise I’m going to regard the whole thing as just another in a seemingly endless series of complete leftist fabrications aimed at Musk and all of his works.

  4. I don’t keep links because it’s not my job. However, highest likelihoods are 1) thread scrubbed off X, and 2) the whole thing is bogus because “It’s the Internet, Jake.” I’ll see if I can locate it again. My memory is shot, so…

    1. Understood. It’s not your job. I was not trying to assign you homework, just thought it might have been recent enough to be easily backtrackable. If not, no hoo-hoo. Snipe have never been my preferred game animals either.

      I find the X interface largely opaque so I don’t use it much. What I see from it is almost entirely because of links posted by others. And, Lord knows, there is no shortage of those. Not being savvy of X’s workings, perhaps there is some rule that posts disappear when the mass of contradictory Community Notes hits some given mass? If it’s not something like that, then, yeah, “It’s the Internet, Jake,” seems as likely an explanation as any and better than most. If the mass of sheer digital BS out there was converted to equivalent matter it would probably collapse spontaneously into a singularity.

      1. The late Vernor Vinge called it the web of a billion lies. I think he underestimated the number.

        1. I was sorry he died. Whenever we were at the same SF con, we had many interesting discussions. I did the Guest of Honor interview with him at one of the Trinoc*Cons in NC. It was taped, so there must be video floating around somewhere.

  5. I found it. Morgan Wyatt Khan and some others posting in April, picked up by the news media in May. I probably saw it on the MSN feed, which I try to ignore. Looks like it’s all still up and ignored by Musk/

    1. What makes this guy more plausible is, the complaint about mishandling Nitrogen COPVs was level two months before the explosion due to failed Nitrogen COPV. Funny name though, real or not: Morgan and Wyatt Earp with Khan Noonan Sing?! His YouTube channel makes him seem a little odd (coming from someone who is a LOT odd [me]}.

      1. Thanks for the lead. Appreciate the effort.

        Can’t find anything from this guy dated prior to May. The complaints about allegedly improperly torqued/bolted COPVs are all ex post facto. It’s certainly possible that there’s been some editing of this guy’s history going on – when I click on “View All” I see nothing whatsoever – but then I have come to view nearly all digital devices and web sites as random behavior generators.

        All of the crypto-physics and flying saucer stuff makes me think this is just a mildly deranged Trekkie who couldn’t cut the mustard at Starbase. He certainly seemed to react disproportionately to a quite mild request from HR not to post selfies with Starship backgrounds on his social media.

        Claims to be a USAF vet. One has to wonder what his discharge status was.

        Guy seems to have a real problem with authority – even garden-variety middle management authority. Also seems to think maybe a bit better of himself than is warranted by the evidence on offer. I’ve met a fair number of people like that along my occupational backtrail. I’m gonna say disgruntled former employee with at least a moderate personality disorder.

        It’s too bad the Left doesn’t seem to have the money it used to have. If it did, I suspect this guy could have coasted for quite awhile on the erstwhile Marxist rubber chicken circuit.

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