Elon Musk has not had a good week. His re-X of an antisemitic X led to a number of advertisers dumping X.
Disney, Apple and others pull ads from X over Elon Musk's antisemitic post : NPR.
Today Space-X launched its second rocket. It did not go well again.
The explosion was expected. The rocket successfully tested stage one. That gave them the data they needed up to this point.
“As you can see, the super heavy booster has just experienced a rapid, unscheduled disassembly.”
So why did it have a stage 2 if it was just a test of stage 1?
Sadly, they did not dump X. They merely suspended advertising until the short attention span of Americans (approximately 3x that of a goldfish) forgets this and moves on to other pressing matters such as Dancng with the Stars.
It has to carry the second stage to test the first stage.
NPR was saying each time there is testing there are failures in this industry. This was successful because it went higher than the first launch successfully giving them data on stage 1.
Sad but true.
(and typing to get to 20)
Seen elsewhere: “Can’t wait for Musk to have a rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
It’s rather tough to launch half of a rocket.
What Leap said.
david fb
There are two trains of though,
NASA takes the first
SpaceX takes the second
NASA could not land rockets on their tail
SpaceX can and does
The Captain
Funny pro Musk play on words
Maybe these investors will be happier with a transgendered advertising campaign about driving the new model Tesla Testicla
The Captain
That’s pretty much exactly wrong. It was a pretty successful test.
Yes, there were plans for a controlled descent of both stages. You need those plans in case things go much better than expected.
The key parts of the test were getting all of the first stage engines to ignite and run, and the stage separation and ignition of the second stage engines. Those were all accomplished.
Anything past that is gravy.
Some years ago, I was at an air show where the Army’s Golden Knights parachute team performed. One of the guys landed way back in the audience, instead of anywhere near the target on the airfield. “Great target area landing” cheered the team’s announcer.
Steve
As a real live Cape Canaveral boy (Dad was a rocket scientist, and I watched one of the earliest Redstone lift-offs, and two explosions “on the pad”) I say ptheland has it just right
I am still wild for rocketry, and I was quite pleased. If they had had successful 2nd stage separation and ignition I would have been ecstatic.
d fb
And there is the other part of the X-plosion.
You, too?
I was a little young to understand the Mercury missions, but I followed the later Gemini and all of the Apollo missions avidly.
Dad was always at work during launches while Mom and I watched on TV. My younger siblings were less interested, mainly because of their age.
—Peter
We lived next door to a major rocket scientist I have mentioned before, Ed Hall.
Dad produced the wire that was used in Telstar; wire to that point broke quickly from the stresses and was not able to handle the repeated heating and cooling of the sun and the shade in the orbital path of those early satellites. He led the research division of a small specialty metals manufacturer in New Jersey; I remember going to the plant and watching the giant ladles of metal being poured into ingots and then run through endless dies turning a single block of metal into a spool of wires dozens of miles long.
I bragged to all the kids in school that my Dad was helping defeat the Russians in space. I don’t really think Telstar did that, but what did I know?
Not surprised that METARites include so many rocket children.
My Dad went into WWII with a B.S. in Civil/Mechanical Engineering, by the end of the African campaign was a Captain of Artillery, where he was sufficiently clever in repairing broken firing pins faster than anybody else that he was thought well of. He got plucked away from the war just north of Rome in 1944 and sent by the Army to Caltech to study to be ready to be a PhD advanced engineering babysitter of the captured Peenmunde Germans (von Braun and co) from their arrival in the USA until about 1955. Thereafter he was one of the ten primary engineers behind ICBM guidance and control, working as one of the founding engineers of Ramo Woolridge. I played chess with von Braun and learned to ski with Dolf Thiel’s kids. I taught then how to surf.
d fb
