I’ve always been into ‘space stuff’, so I tend to always have an eye on whatever the new space-thing is… And today the new space-thing was SpaceX’s test of the super-heavy booster and ‘Starship’ stack.
It looked a bit like this when they lit it off:
I kinda grew up in the space program – from sitting on my great grandmother’s couch in Ohio watching Saturn-Vs fling people to the moon as a toddler in the late 60’s and early 70’s, to my father working at Beech Aircraft / Raytheon on the Shuttle program in my teens. Even my aunt worked at Ball Aerospace on the Star Tracker for the Shuttle program.
I guess the Space Shuttle was kind of a family thing for us and the house was always chock full of odd bits of memorabilia… I even went into the US Submarine Force because it was as close to space travel as I could get without being an astronaut.
Anyway, today’s launch kinda gave me the same vibe as those early Saturn V launches – which was cool. I mean, sure, things ultimately went pear-shaped and the big-ass SpaceX rocket blew up shortly after non-separation, but that was mostly expected with something as ground breaking as this.
It looks like they lost several engines after clearing the tower, and while they still made it through MaxQ with only 27 of the 33 engines running, I’m guessing the loss of thrust stability on the ‘backflip’ probably prevented stage separation…
Here’s what the rocket looked like while going uphill:
I’ve been asked why I wasn’t this jazzed about the recent NASA Artemis flight back in November, and truth be told it’s because Artemis isn’t anything new.
And I mean that literally…
Artemis is 100 billion dollars spent on pulling Apollo and Shuttle era stuff out of mothballs and blending it all together in some single-use Frankenrocket that is so single-use that they can’t even reuse the launch pad.
The booster SRBs, orange fuel tank, and RS-25 engines were swiped from the Shuttle program, the second stage engine is an Apollo era Pratt & Whitney RL10, and the crew module was lifted pretty much intact from Apollo – and only really updated with computers that don’t use core memory and some touch screens because that’s what SpaceX did with Dragon…
Like I said; Frankenrocket.
Contrast this with SpaceX’s super-heavy which is all new tech aiming to be mostly reusable while sending even more payload uphill on cheaper gas…
And it cost less – a lot less – than refurbing 70’s / 80’s era rocket parts.
Listening to "One Night" by LeBrock