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Twitter likely to take idiots offer to buy them for $43 billion

Meanwhile, Starship experienced an “unplanned disassembly” three minutes into its flight. About two minutes into the flight, at least 6 of the 33 engines were not firing.
 
Yeah, this whole 'we don't need all the engines to work' ideology in rocket science seems ridiculously stupid.

Musk: We have 37 Raptor engines.
Press: 37 sounds like a lot. What happens if you lose one?
Musk: We don't need all 37 engines.
Press: So if you lose 3 engines?
Musk: We'd be fine.
Press: But if the Raptor isn't ensured to work, why would it stop failing at 3?
Musk: I promise excitement and Mars!
Press: But, what sense is there in building redundancy in the system, if that redundancy is required because you anticipate failure?
Musk: I can't hear you... I'm tweeting...
 
hurtinbuckaroo said:
Meanwhile, Starship experienced an “unplanned disassembly” three minutes into its flight. About two minutes into the flight, at least 6 of the 33 engines were not firing.
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I rather suspect the problem was that inadequate launch pad. We know debris really went flying, is there any reason to think some of it didn't hit the engines? Rocket engines can't ingest things like air-breathers but they can still be damaged by impacts and they aren't built to stand up to that sort of thing like airplane engines are.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
hurtinbuckaroo said:
Meanwhile, Starship experienced an “unplanned disassembly” three minutes into its flight. About two minutes into the flight, at least 6 of the 33 engines were not firing.
Click to expand...
I rather suspect the problem was that inadequate launch pad. We know debris really went flying, is there any reason to think some of it didn't hit the engines? Rocket engines can't ingest things like air-breathers but they can still be damaged by impacts and they aren't built to stand up to that sort of thing like airplane engines are.
Click to expand...
I’ve seen discussions that suggest that was very likely the cause, at least for the three that went out almost immediately, but possibly the others as well.
 
FAA grounds SpaceX's Starship rockets after explosion minutes into launch - POLITICO
The Federal Aviation Administration grounded SpaceX’s Starship rockets on Thursday after one of them exploded minutes into lift off on its first test flight and crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

The rocket, powered by 33 Raptor engines, tumbled and came apart about four minutes after the launch in Boca Chica, Texas. Starship had no people or satellites on board.

The rockets will remain grounded pending an FAA investigation to ensure “any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety,” as is standard practice, the FAA said in a statement.
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Flawed SpaceX Starship Launch Leaves Texas Town Covered in Dust
To residents of Port Isabel, about six miles away from the launch site, Starship’s launch felt like an earthquake, according to a New York Times report. The ground rumbled and the sound of the engines roaring to life was audible. At least one window shattered amid the force.

The massive rocket also sent dust, dirt, and other debris flying into the air, which subsequently rained down over Port Isabel and elsewhere. “Cameron County Emergency Management Division has confirmed that the dust that fell this morning in Port Isabel was sand and soil from near the Space X launch site that was lofted into the air by the force of lift off,” city officials wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday. Starship’s blast left behind an approximately 25-foot-deep-crater, and all of that displaced earth had to go somewhere.
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Some of the rocket's engines failed during its flight.

The first stage has 33 engines, in 3 concentric rings, with 3, 10, and 20 engines each.

Full flight of SpaceX Starship test launch - YouTube

Count of failed engines:
  • T + 0:16 - 3 -- display begins
  • T + 0:40 - 4 -- one more
  • T + 1:01 - 5 -- one more

The second stage has 6 engines, also in a ring.

What We Know About Why SpaceX's Starship Rocket Failed | Time
noting
FAA Statements on Recent Aviation Accidents and Incidents | Federal Aviation Administration

Full text of the FAA's announcement:
April 20, 2023

Space Operations / SpaceX Starship Super Heavy / Boca Chica, Texas

An anomaly occurred during the ascent and prior to stage separation resulting in a loss of the vehicle. No injuries or public property damage have been reported.

The FAA will oversee the mishap investigation of the Starship / Super Heavy test mission.

A return to flight of the Starship / Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. This is standard practice for all mishap investigations.

The FAA is responsible for protecting the public during commercial space transportation launch and reentry operations.
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So what was that? Was Starship’s launch a failure or a success? | Ars Technica
... For those who know a bit more about the launch industry and the iterative design methodology, getting the Super Heavy rocket and Starship upper stage off the launch pad was a huge success.

Why? Because one could sit in meetings for ages and discuss everything that could go wrong with a rocket like this, with an unprecedented number of first stage engines and its colossal size. The alternative is simply to get the rocket into a "good enough" configuration and go fly. Flying is the ultimate test, providing the best data. There is no more worrying about theoretical failures. The company's engineers actually get to identify what is wrong and then go and fix it. But you have to accept some failure.

So SpaceX's process is messier, but it is also much faster. Consider this: NASA spent billions of dollars and the better part of a decade constructing the Space Launch System rocket that had a nearly flawless debut flight—aside from damage to the launch tower—in late 2022. NASA followed a linear design method, complete with extensive and expensive analysis, because a failure of the SLS rocket would have raised serious questions about the agency's competence.

Fortunately for SpaceX, the company can afford to "fail." It can do so because it has already built three more Super Heavy rockets that are nearly ready to fly. In fact, SpaceX can build 10 Super Heavy first stages in the time it takes NASA to build a single SLS rocket. If the first five fail but the next five succeed, which is a better outcome? How about in two or three years, when SpaceX is launching and landing a dozen or more Super Heavy rockets while NASA's method allows it a single launch a year?

So, yes, SpaceX's rocket exploded on Thursday. The company will learn. And it will fly again, perhaps sometime later this fall or winter. Soon, it probably will be flying frequently.
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Over a half century ago, the Soviet Union competed with the US in getting astronauts / cosmonauts to the Moon. That required a big rocket to get off of our planet. The US one, the  Saturn V, had 13 launches, all successful, but the Soviet one, the  N1 (rocket), had 4 launches, all failed.

How many engines per stage:
  1. 30 -- 6, 24
  2. 8
  3. 4
 
“A return to flight of the Starship / Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. This is standard practice for all mishap investigations.”
 
We'll see if the raptor engine can be sorted out. The Soviets couldn't make that many engines work in unison. SpaceX is trying to do what they couldn't. Granted, they got a lot more science to work from these days, but running that many engines together can't be easy and while SpaceX is outwardly happy it got off the ground, It still needs to work, and we haven't gotten to the point yet, where it is a design fix and they are good. SpaceX has gone very far is a relatively short period of time, but now they are designing something huge, that few have ever accomplished... and Saturn V involved probably the Tesla of rocket science (slash war criminal, but you know...). My concern with SpaceX and this rocket is that Musk's priority is price, not robustness. I don't accept any design where failure is expected in the engines. Redundancy is meant for unexpected failure.

Another issue which is a bit of a hassle is actually going to be the launch pad.
 
I signed up for a free Atlantic newsletter, and got this in my in-box:

Elon Musk Revealed What Twitter Always Was

Below is a preview of my latest article for The Atlantic.

By most measures, Elon Musk’s tenure at Twitter has been an abject failure. The purchase has coincided with a loss in his net worth and saddled the company with debt. His obsessions with “the woke mind virus” and his peculiar decision to act as a personal customer-service concierge for right-wing shitposters like @catturd2 have alienated the billionaire from allies and most important, advertisers; the company’s net ad revenue is projected to drop 27.9 percent by the end of 2023, according to Insider Intelligence. He is so clueless and incurious as to the desires of his user base that his plans to boost Twitter’s bottom line involved a verification and subscription product that users aren’t just uninterested in, but find legitimately embarrassing.

But Musk, who was once thought of by many as a visionary, has, in fact, accomplished something meaningful with Twitter. He’s stripped the platform down to its skeleton, giving everyone the opportunity to recognize how fundamentally embarrassing it’s always been. To observe him at work—which is to say, to watch him tweet recycled Reddit memes, feel out ill-considered company policies, and pander to far-right goobers with culture-war drivel—is to witness the platform working at its purest, basest level. Forget offensive; his behavior is cringe. It shows us what has always existed deep down in Twitter’s molten core, an elemental feeling shared by the platform’s most ardent users and that powers much of social media: shame.
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Musk is a long time Twitter addict, a junkie who bought the pharmacy.
 
With the legacy of Twitter saved*, Musk to move back to ruining the lives of those that work at SpaceX and Tesla.

Curious what this means about Twitter 2.0, whether that actually exists at all or is in development but running into snags or will be released tomorrow. With Musk, you really just can't know.
 
Considering the mess made of Twitter, the financial problems of the loan debt used to buy it, the fines being imposed by Germany for violations of their law, and the limited revenue coming in, she might be there just to sell everything and turn the lights off. (oh, and take the blame for everything)
 
marc said:
Considering the mess made of Twitter, the financial problems of the loan debt used to buy it, the fines being imposed by Germany for violations of their law, and the limited revenue coming in, she might be there just to sell everything and turn the lights off. (oh, and take the blame for everything)
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What an inspiring vision. Hope you’re right. More likely though, Musk has bought in to the RW myth that WEF controls all the money, and he wants whatever they have. So he hired someone on the “inside”.
 
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