SPACEX - Starship Launch of 24/7 - A Cascading Failure

foreign [Music] welcome to this episode of the Common Sense skeptic by now everyone is aware that on April 20th 2023 at 8 33 a.m local time in Boca Chica Texas SpaceX conducted their orbital watch attempt of their integrated Starship number 24 atop super heavy booster number seven the flight lasted for just under four minutes and most channels covering the watch showered glowing praise upon musk and SpaceX for managing to clear the Tower with their 120 meter tall rocket carrying almost 5 000 tons of propellant in the combined craft considering their declared mission was to launch from Boca Chica Texas to orbital elevation and Fly East three quarters of the way around the world to a Splashdown off the coast of Hawaii managing to not blow up a launch platform as the minimum indicator of success seemed an easy bar to reach yet as it turns out they couldn't even get that right now much has been made of how musk and SpaceX would have gathered tons of information about the flight for use in future launches but it really has to be said that musk and SpaceX have learned nothing from readily available information regarding how to build launch pads and develop space launch sites in general such as the design of flame diverters or the proper location of propellant tanks in relation to the hot end of a rocket so don't hold your breath that they're going to actually learn anything from this of course SpaceX Fanboys are heralding this launch as a groundbreaking achievement at least on this point they are somewhat correct but for those who think this watch was successful we're about to bring you back down to reality because this was a cascading failure right from T-minus zero to begin with let's do a run-through analysis of the SpaceX live feed of the launch in Flight that lasted just under four minutes on the clock we'll stop at points where significant events seem to have taken place and we'll keep in mind what we told people to watch out for in our April 14th tweet from before the expected April 17th launch that was scrubbed due to a frozen valve based on the other failed Starship flights from over two years ago we knew to watch for any dark smoke coming from the engine compartment which would indicate a fire any orange Flames indicating a fire or a failing engine or green flame indicating an engine chewing itself up Flex at the stage connections and blast damage to the pad all of which occurred we also included reverberations in the vehicle but considering the unsteady grainy footage and heat Distortion that would not have been possible to see anyway so let's dissect the SpaceX live feed before checking out some of the other feeds presented by other channels to compare notes ignition occurs at T minus two seconds with a giant dust cloud being blasted up below the orbital launch Mount or olm but on closer inspection dust was not the only thing flying up when the Starship lifted off emerging from the darker massive pulverized carcinogenic concrete dust plume are giant chunks of launch pad getting thrown almost as high as the Chopsticks which themselves are over 100 meters off the ground as you can see here in the left-hand frame to the south of the pad the protected Wetland areas of the Las Palomas Wildlife Management Area start getting blasted by large chunks of debris flying hundreds of meters in mere seconds their Landings quite visible in this shot when the Telemetry frame spreads across the bottom of the screen it covers up some of the larger splashes caused by the shrapnel as the camera continues to track the Rocket's Ascent the Starship cleared the tower and starts to pick up velocity although it is already leaning at about a three degree angle right out of the gate something they try to correct as it continued on the Telemetry Banner shows the typical readouts as well as the graphic showing the super heavy configuration of the 33 Raptor engines by the time the graphic is brought up three of these units are already dead including one of the three gimbaling wrap appears in the central cluster the other two failures are side by side which may indicate a common cause of failure at 29 seconds into launch unknown material is blown away from the bottom of the super heavy booster which immediately causes a malfunction in another engine whose flame turns bright orange compared to the other methane Flames three seconds later there's an explosive Flash and just above the failing engine there are other Flames visible on or through the side of the booster leaving a charred area where the Flames die down the engine failure shows up in the graphic at the bottom from here on in the Flames coming out the ship are no longer the clearish blue purple we should expect from a methane engine but instead are showing up orange either due to incomplete combustion of the propellant or something else that's on fire or a combination of both at this point the rocket is moving about 540 kilometers per hour at 47 seconds something else comes loose from Starship and flies down the length of super heavy given the number of heat towels that flew off the craft one of those may be a reasonable assumption at 55 seconds orange Flames intensified suggesting another engine bought the farm confirmed by the configuration graphic showing another icon changing color right away although you can't see it because the banner is in the way again more pieces get blasted off super heavy followed by yet another erupting orange plane hopefully one of the other channels managed a better view of this event from their angle the SpaceX feed swaps to another view and now we can see a discrepancy between what the graphics shows versus what engines are still in operation the graphic shows 5 engines down when there are in fact six not working already and it's the most recent failure that seems to have taken out two more of them spirits of orange flame come out from another Raptor at the bottom of the craft indicating yet another engine failure the zoom changes and we can clearly see six field Raptors with others intermittently spewing orange flame when the control calls Max Q at 119. at 127 something Falls away from the top of the second stage near the top fin on the right side and with the vehicle approaching 1000 kilometers per hour on top of the orange flame extending from the bottom of the engines white smoke or gas starts blowing from the left hand side of the craft another Raptor fails on the graphic or it could possibly be the same one that hadn't registered previously but that wouldn't fit the pattern if you compare the previous information the plume keeps growing in size and given that the Lock's load is dropping faster than the methane load this could be Lux that's venting from broken connections some may think that this is a pressure wave as the ship pushes through Mach 1 but it is not coming from the leading edges of The Craft is coming from a super heavy engine compartment this looks to be yet another failure on that side but the sensor also winds up failing in the end and we don't get another Clear View up the skirt of super heavy to double check it at least not on the SpaceX feet at 155 another orange plume appears shooting flame and smoke upwards 90 degrees out the side of the vehicle instead of out the bottom end of the booster it's pretty hard to see in that distant shot so here it is zoomed in on just saying the camera work from SpaceX during this launch left a lot to be desired this is the clarity that NASA was capable of capturing Discovery with in 2006 at 44 kilometers elevation moving 6600 kilometers per hour by the two minute Mark of a typical shuttle launch STS was moving 2 000 miles per hour 3 200 kilometers per hour faster than Starship having reached Mach 1 within 45 seconds after leaving the pad ship reaches Mach 1 at t plus 145 and never cracks Mach 2. in fact it never exceeds the top speed of the Concord Jet at 2179 kilometers per hour two minutes into a launch shuttle had already separated its srbs moving at 5 650 kilometers per hour at an elevation of 42 kilometers higher and far faster than Starship managed to achieve in the same time frame at 213 the camera changes to show inside the second stage engine compartment where smoke and debris are being blown about by a strong wind where the smoke is coming from is not obvious going back to a split screen in the pitch graphic we see the craft at close to 90 degrees over moving at 2157 kilometers per hour as orange Flames continue to spew out the bottom this is the fastest that the rocket will move today while the first indication of green Flames start appearing at 231 that would be another Raptor dying more orange Flames start appearing in the exhaust as Starship sheds velocity beginning to swing around in a loss of control the commentators mistakenly believe is the beginning of a flip maneuver they intended to use to separate Starship from super heavy which never happens SpaceX obviously knows the vehicle is completely out of control and they removed the orientation Graphics from the banner showing its pitch for people unaware of how SpaceX plan to separate Starship from super heavy this was their big plan moving at Mach 1 they were going to try to crack the whip by flipping the combined craft and over end throwing Starship forward then super heavy was supposed to go back to Boca Chica obviously that plan didn't work nor would we have expected it to continuing on orange burst the flame continued to get shot out of the remaining engines but due to the poor quality of this shot we can't see how many are still functional here we do know that the configuration graphic cannot be relied upon at this point and the rocket appears to Start Tumbling in the air from their apogee of 39 kilometers at 307 the orange Flames again turn green an indication that the engine responsible is chewing itself apart with pieces of copper entering the propellant stream and at 3 15 the combined vehicle starts to free fall at this point concentrate on which is the back end of the vehicle because this will become important shortly more sputtering orange Flames stretch out behind the ship as The Lox tank starts to run on Vapor according to the graphic you can see the flame struggling from the back end trying to keep her in the air but eventually the stresses on the vehicle overcome the frame and at 359 an explosion in a skirt of super heavy causes the catastrophic loss of vehicle followed by another explosion at 401 as both vehicles were falling from the sky more than a minute after SpaceX lost control of it so when the FAA and SpaceX claim they used the FTS the flight termination system to end this flight they are light for whatever unknown reason it is possible the FTS resulted in the second explosion destroying Starship but it is undeniable that it did not cause the first one at the base of super heavy the fds on super heavy is located at the same level as the common Dome between the propellant tanks as seen in this diagram you can also see it in this photo two-thirds of the way up the length of the vehicle from the tail but it's completely obvious that the first explosion that consumes super heavy came from the engine compartment rupturing The Almost Empty lox tank which is why the white plume of gas was released the second explosion might have been the FTS but that was not the explosion that terminated the flight and now the wreckage from This Disaster is now sitting on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico not that far from Boca Chica that's the entire SpaceX feed let's see what other information we can collect from other camera angles from other channels a quick update on the end of flight since we went through our breakdown on efts claims some new higher quality footage has been released that has a much clearer view of what was going on let's go through that channels like Scott Manley are now under the impression that the FTS was deployed earlier than the visible explosion but that the charges meant to destroy the rocket to prevent it from veering off course and possibly head back toward land booming at 2 000 kilometers per hour merely punctured the skin of the Starship in super heavy let's see how those claims stack up against how we presented it in the first place but this time using high def footage from Tim dot starting at around t plus 245. right away in this shot we can see venting coming from what appears to be the meeting between the two vehicles as bursts of green flame from failing Raptors we noticed earlier shoot up from the super heavy engine compartment the bottom of the combined vehicle continues to swing around counterclockwise from our view more green spots of flame and venting from between the vehicles continues it's possible at this point that the Luxe tank and Starship the upper stage has been ruptured we're now past the three minute Mark of flight another engine looks to be on its last legs judging from the added orange flame now starting here we can see another energetic venting of gas further up Starship from the stage separation plume and that might be the FTS being triggered since FTS is short for flight termination system and it failed to terminate the flight that would qualify as a fail on this system since the machine continues to Tumble out of control further we don't see a similar venting on super heavy at the same time that seems to happen several seconds later we can now see three ventings of gas shooting upwards so if both FTS systems have now been triggered neither one terminated the flight properly and both are just leaking out gas as the rocket continues to Tumble out of control until finally an explosion in the super heavy engine compartment does what the FTS could not and terminates the flight in a giant Fireball this explanation would mean that the second explosion two seconds later was not caused by the FTS system either and Starship was destroyed under its own weight as it fell from the sky some sycophant channels and news organizations tried to milk some positive press of this cascading failure stated publicly that this was a successful test of the flight termination system as you can tell that was not the case and when we said in our original statements that the FAA and musk were lying when they said the FTS terminated the flight that can now be confirmed with this footage even with the grainy SpaceX footage we were working with we made the right call that FTS was not responsible for ending the flight in its tracks one final note for all the people who honestly believe the vehicle held up well with all the twisting and turning it endured there's a leaked photo that dispelled that claim as well as you can see from the camera high up on the Starship the vehicle was folding in half at this point before it disintegrated something you can't really tell even from this higher quality footage time to check out the launch from a completely different angle this Drone footage looking north from Mexico toward the launch facility does a great job showing the ejection of materials from the orbital launch Mount across the protected Wetlands blasting the protected Turtle nesting grounds and splashing up to half a kilometer away into the Gulf of Mexico turning the entire area into a shooting gallery most of the ejecta is likely smaller chunks but then you have splashes like this significantly larger pieces of material this dark plume is where the force of the Raptors dug under the large slabs responsible for many of the larger pieces you can see the sand dunes almost immediately get peppered with blast material and the first large Splash in the surf is just under six seconds after the dark concrete plume occurs 500 meters away from the olm giving that projectile a speed upwards of 300 kilometers per hour certainly fast enough to kill any creature it would have come in contact with although we don't have a launch clock on this feed we can't tell where it matches up against the SpaceX live stream we can see the rocket take off at a significant angle then try to correct itself before the orange flames of raptor failure start pouring out the back and this angle has a much more complete view of the Raptor explosion and plume of gray smoke that followed it at around a 30 second Mark before the rocket flies up out of frame by now you have probably seen some of the destruction caused in the area immediately adjacent to the site some of the first released footage was of the decimation of cars illegally parked in the state park something the park service has already chastised musk for previously if you're wondering where that claim comes from that complaint is written right into the FAA dpea in fact none of these cars in this shot from Google Earth are supposed to be there this fisheye view from La Padre catches the launch the ejecta cloud and the Maelstrom of cement chunks that destroyed everything they hit before the dust reached the vehicles the white NASA space flight van got smoked repeatedly with chunks of launch pad from 400 meters away most of the cameras from various YouTube and news organizations got smashed to pieces and were knocked over the entire area instantly transformed from tranquil nature Outpost to an active war zone as the dust settled the greater scale of this debacle became clear the tank farm only 80 meters away sustained massive dents in the protective skins of the tanks some of the tanks were leaking their contents through punctures in both the outer skin and the inner tank they were meant to protect we know that starhopper only 240 meters away also took a couple punches in the face but these are the best quality shots of that damage we have seen so far the cause of this destruction was not only obvious it was totally predictable we know because we predicted the cement pad under the olm would get blasted apart instantly by this system and that pad is now a crater where four meters of reinforced concrete used to be which has to qualify the olm as a complete write-off yet musk had the gall to suggest in a tweet that they'll be ready to go again in one to two months for another attempt we're going to go out on a limb here and say that's not going to happen at any point this year no matter what musk told Bill Nelson and another claim musk the pseudo-genius was making at the same time was that to correct the issues with the launch Mount pad getting blasted to they were going to install quote massive water cooled steel plate underneath it where to begin on how ridiculous that concept is first a giant metal plate underneath the olm will do an even better job than the concrete of reflecting the extreme pressure levels and thrust coming from the rocket engine assembly right back up into it forces that threw massive chunks of concrete all across the landscape and obviously up into the engine skirt to damage the first three dead Raptors second anytime you're dealing with water in an enclosed space that's getting heated you have to consider the expansion of the steam that's created as an example in nature the reason why a tree explodes when it's hit by lightning is because the energy instantly turns all the water in the tree to steam to blast it apart water circulating inside a metal plate that's superheated into steam above 1000 degrees Fahrenheit is going to expand 4 200 times and the operating temperature of the Raptor engines is somewhere around 1400 degrees Fahrenheit so good luck containing that expansion third point when not if when those plates rupture or the rocket energy gets underneath them they are also going to get thrown several hundred meters away along with whatever Lies Beneath them how do we know that well this launch costs several giant metal plates into the state park across the highway beyond the tank farm as it also blasted concrete bombs of every size across hell's half acre we saw in the launch video how some chunks of the Carnage got shot up to half a kilometer away at about 300 kilometers per hour while the immediate vicinity saw even more blast damage this before and after from RGB aerial shows what remains of the olm after launch and this red line designates the border of the lodge site everything on the other side of that red line is protected Nature Reserve and this is footage taken on April 22nd by one of the NASA space flight Ops that shows exactly what that half kilometer radius of debris looks like now on top of all the damage to adjacent properties there is also a lot of damage done to the site and Machinery on site that was the result of pure negligence as well any fool should have known that the tank farm was going to get hit and leaving all of your site transports lined up in a row to get roasted along that wall seems especially idiotic the channels who rushed to publish Clips without bothering to even look at them were reporting five Raptors were out because that's what the graphics said but in our real-time analysis of the SpaceX launch we figured they lost at least seven or eight and thanks to Tim Dodd that suspicion was confirmed the high def short that he published included this clip and if we zoom in on the AFT end we can count up the number of raptors that were still functioning the middle ring for some reason was unaffected but two gimbaled units in the center cluster are dead along with six in the outer ring leaving only 25 of the 33 Raptors operating at this point a full quarter of them have been destroyed and at no time during this launch did the graphic in the SpaceX feed represent any more than six failures the guys at NASA space flight captured when the second gimbled Raptor cut out which was about 30 seconds before the machine started to exhibit loss of control great camera worked by the way capturing these frames which means that all the explosions and plumes and green smoke that happened after this event would only add to the current tally of eight dead Raptors there's no launch clock but we can go by the time in the top left and we know that this is right when the white plume was forming behind the vehicle at 834.55 at 83503 it appears another Raptor explodes leaving a trail of continuous orange flame coming from the side of the vehicle with additional occasional larger flares this would bring the tally of dead to nine the shot at 8 35 18 shows Starship shooting orange Flames up down and back from super heavy as it obviously loses control this is the point where the FTS should have been activated but it obviously wasn't at 8 35 22 another large orange flare begins so possibly another Raptor down that would be 10. at 8 35 36 one of the Raptors cannibalizes itself indicated by Green Smoke in the plume if this was a new failure that's 11 dead or that could have been death throws of the tenth one at 8 35 43 they changed the camera angle to show the vehicle obviously malfunctioning with inconsistent flames and another burst of orange spinning as it goes at 8 3610 another orange burst to flames the last one before it appears to Start Tumbling from the sky as it falls at 8 36 34 another orange burst and at 8 3707 an explosion at the back end of the ship tears it apart a second explosion two seconds later lights up the cloud of oxygen that it passes through and again shrapnel rains down into the Gulf of Mexico so a couple more pickups along the way there the aftermath of this launch has left at least a square kilometer of area surrounding the site littered with pieces of concrete rebar and various pieces of equipment and buildings the scale of the destruction was only brought to light as camera Crews were able to pick up their shattered equipment and vehicles hopefully everybody picked up all the broken glass from the vehicles they parked there while they were added and now it's time for SpaceX to fix everything they broke outside their launch area after the failed sn11 launch which blew up somewhere over the launch pad and Scattered stainless steel shrapnel across the landscape as part of their FAA environmental assessment senior director of Starship operations Shia Mel Patel signed an agreement with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department filed as appendix C in their conditional agreement with the FAA the purpose of this document is to acknowledge they need to restore impacts to tpwd lands following certain rocket tests and launch activities an agreement that was spurred on by the disaster on March 30th of 2021 involving sn11 the first point is that tpwd staff will be notified by the FAA in the event of an anomaly since the FAA was the agency responsible for allowing this launch to occur in the first place 0.2 states that following an anomaly SpaceX must release the closure area west of all the hard checkpoints while responses are taken however the road was kept closed for at least two days following the crash point three states that debris removal will occur by means that will result in the least amount of impact as determined by tpwd 0.4 states that tpwd will be the organization that defines when SpaceX is allowed to conduct the cleanup as required except in the case of batteries or explosives or anything else that would pose an actual risk for public health and safety then 0.5 tells SpaceX exactly how the R2 conduct that Cleanup in accordance with tpwd and usfws which is the federal U.S fish and wildlife service 5.1 says they cannot drag or winch any of the material across the ground 5.2 says no vehicles or equipment can access the parks except through Express written consent which they would be foolish to Grant 5.3 tell SpaceX that big pieces will have to be cut apart using tools they have to haul in on foot and then they'll have to haul the debris and the tools out by hand 5.4 tell SpaceX when they're cutting these things apart they have to lay down tarps to catch any shavings and particulates caused by cutting them apart and those shavings in particulates will also have to be brought out by foot and disposed of properly off-site and 5.5 says that unless it's a debris emergency all of this work should only take place during daylight hours then Section 3 lays out how SpaceX will be responsible for restoring areas to the pre-anomaly conditions how exactly they plan on doing that with algal flats and Loma habitats is as yet untested according to section 3.2 this will include grooming of tracks and other scars using hand tools and Native soils establishing desired slopes and Contours and inoculating the soils with appropriate species of algae and microbes the second paragraph of section 3.2 holds SpaceX responsible for restoring lost Upland vegetation through transplant and receding efforts and section 3.3 says if they can't fix the problems they create they will have to compensate tpwd for loss of Fish Wildlife and recreational values resulting from damages to the state park unfortunately for everyone involved Elon Musk has never been known to leave something better than he founded and he's been running roughshod over the entire area since he first set foot in Boca Chica since there was no prior proper planning or Preparation to prevent this piss-poor performance musk and Company now have at least a million square meters to clear rake and reseed before their square with the signed agreement with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the worst possible thing Texas could do with this being the first disaster would be to not hold his feet to that fire and for the love of God don't ever allow their vehicles onto your Marshland make him and his minions carry out every piece of rubble by foot something we found very interesting about this particular radius of Destruction being no less than 500 meters wide is that if you take that radius and apply it to pad 39a at Cape Canaveral where SpaceX has been building their second Starship launch site here's where 500 meters from the launch stand takes you just outside the outer ring of the designated area for launch almost like NASA planned that out but here's the problem pad 39a is hollowed ground it's where Apollo launched from is where shuttle launched from how in God's name NASA allowed musk to take over this site needs now to be investigated from top to bottom because if this level of blast damage were to happen at pad 39a which seems incredibly likely given how this launch went that's a huge piece of space flight history that will have been lost for nothing and similar damage done would extend right down to the SpaceX horizontal Assembly Building at the South End of the blast string NASA has to know that this is going to end poorly now as we were wrapping up this episode we were told about an article released by cnbc's Laura kolodny and it just puts the cherry on the top of this stainless steel banana split the key point of this article Starship is grounded until further notice to quote the April 24th article as a result of the explosion the Federal Aviation Administration FAA grounded the company's Starship super heavy launch program pending results of a mishap investigation SpaceX did not immediately return a request for comment this shutdown of super heavy means that contracts musk has managed to weasel out of NASA for hls and for proof of concept for their refilling technology that doesn't exist will get kicked even further down the road jeopardizing NASA's return to the moon and so far as the deer Moon contract is concerned which has already stalodated well that private contract should be considered null and void with deposits repayable you can bet your bottom dollar that musk will start crying the blues about this investigation and delay laying the blame at the feet of regulators which he is constantly butting heads with but this disaster was musk's fault he has no one to blame for this piss poor planning and literal Fallout other than himself another largely overlooked environmental disaster caused by this launch attempt that was especially concerning for the ground nesting Birds inhabiting the grasslands in the protected Parts adjacent to launch site was yet another fast-moving wildfire that swept across the grasslands and Sand Dunes roasting unhatched eggs of endangered birds in their now abandoned nests NASA space flight caught footage of the fire as it moved towards Mexico and recent Shots by Eric r on Flickr show the Damage Done not only to the landscape but also to the nest themselves if these are eggs of a species of bird on a critically endangered list each and every one of them can result in heavy fines and could possibly result in criminal charges if any environmental organization steps up to file charges and also there has been a steady stream of articles in the past several days such as this article from Texas public radio describing how Port Isabel and South Padre Island were coated with fine particulate that fell for hours 10 kilometers away that cloud of dust was mainly pulverized concrete which is known to cause respiratory issues including silicosis which can be totally disabling and in extreme cases may be fatal listen it's really simple even if SpaceX was following the agreements they signed and even if they were developing the launch pad properly using flame diverters and water Deluge systems that they don't have a license for and taking better precautions where Wildlife are concerned and in general behaving responsibly Boca Chica Texas for many reasons is a completely inadequate and inappropriate location for this facility Texas and the FAA have made huge errors in judgment taking musk at his word now they and the entire region are paying the price time and again they caved into his demands or didn't punish him for failing to honor their agreements so it's their own damn fault that musk has made them all look like idiots now it's time for them to return the favor and so far as we're concerned it's time to pull the plug on Starbase Texas thank you for watching this episode of the Common Sense skeptic for those people just finding the channel you should know that the arguments we have against SpaceX in Boca Chica are well established positions that go back for over two years now first published in our musk versus the FAA episode from February of 2021. we even participated in the virtual Town Hall the FAA conducted in October 18th of 2021 speaking in opposition to their site for the same reasons that musk made very obvious with this launch this is not a new position we've taken this is a long-standing prediction that came true our belief on this topic is that anyone who believes it is acceptable to sacrifice any portion of Earth to pursue the fantasy of starting their failed Life Anew on Mars is quite frankly pathetic demonstrating the absolute worst traits that Humanity has to offer thanks again to all supporters of our Channel and especially our patreon patrons and welcome to the 1000 new subscribers that have found us in the past week while you're here please give 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