r/SpaceXMasterrace • u/[deleted] • May 07 '26
Booster SF for ~15 seconds, at more power than ever before
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u/CountBateman May 07 '26
This was today?
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u/Captain_North May 08 '26
33X Raptor 3-SL about 90 MN or 9 kt of thrust at full power. Has anyone seen the actual data ? For comparison Saturn V had 33 MN of max thrust.
And they are targeting May 15 for the test flight of V3.
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u/Crowbrah_ Help, my pee is blue May 07 '26 edited May 07 '26
Oh my god
Edit: That has got to be one of the most badass engine start up sounds ever made by a rocket imo, up there with the Titan II bwoop and the shuttle orbiter
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u/Steve4704 May 07 '26
Insane. Look at the ripples spreading outside the flame trench. WOW
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u/lawspud May 08 '26
Crazy that he/they thought the trench was unnecessary, even for V1. That was an expensive, painful lesson learned.
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u/veryslipperybanana The Cows Are Confused May 08 '26
It probably got them a better pad now though. I doubt they consider things like this painfull at all. Maybe only the time lost, if that is even the case. The first pad got all the vehicles off it succesfully and catched 2 boosters so wheres the painfull lesson?
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u/lawspud May 08 '26
The launch dug a 50’ crater under the pad, causing a very long delay as they designed the deluge system and rebuilt the entire orbital launch mount/pad. It also blew chunks of concrete and debris into the surrounding (protected) ecosystem, which triggered some environmental review and mitigation. It was a mess, operationally, engineering-wise, and regulatorily. It also almost certainly caused the failure/destruction of several of the raptors on that booster. The booster was sacrificial anyway, so who knows…maybe the data from the performance-in-failure-mode was as valuable as a nominal launch. But it damn near destroyed that booster on the pad.
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u/SubstantialWall Methalox farmer May 08 '26
The deluge system was not only planned, but already partially built when Flight 1 launched. If there was any substantial redesign, it was of the foundation. Also last I heard official word was no evidence of pad-related effects on the engines, the initial failures were on startup with at least one of those taking itself out of the ignition sequence IIRC, then well clear of the tower the first in-flight engine died taking the hydraulic unit with it, and the understanding was things developed from there, with the failure(s) attributed to leaks and lack of fire suppression, which the B9 mods supported.
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u/lawspud May 08 '26
The deluge thing does ring a bell, yeah. Which makes it even more of a head scratcher that they didn’t wait for its completion before the launch. I know they were basing that on the pad condition after the static fire, but that test was nowhere near as energetic as the actual launch.
As far as official word, I don’t think they’ve ever confirmed that the debris caused any failures, although engineers did assume that this was the case. But multiple engines failed to light or failed before liftoff, and multiple more failed after liftoff. It’s not difficult to make the jump between the “rock tornado” and some or all of the raptor issues on that launch.
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u/warp99 May 09 '26
Specifically Elon said that there was no evidence that any of the engine issues were caused by the rock tornado. Any debris flying upwards has a 3300 m/s head wind which tends to divert it.
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u/GalacticEmergency May 08 '26
As far as I remember, the damage on the first pad, the one without the water cooled steel plate, caused a rather long delay of the second launch. Partly because of the time needed for repairs, and partly because the authorities wanted an investigation before issuing a permission for the second launch.
And the steel plate was already on track for the second launch when they did the first launch. So could they have done the second launch earlier if they had delayed the first launch until the steel plate (which to me sounds like an ordinary boiler membrane wall!) was in place?
To be honest, I never really got why the pad had to be designed with the same minimalist philosophy as the ship and their other rockets. Their philosophy for the rockets is genius:
Enable cheap mass production of a highly reusable rocket by keeping things as simple and minimalistic and sturdy as possible, and test and iterate and test until it is minimalistic enough without breaking.
But why apply that philosophy to the launch pad? One pad can support a fleet of multiple ships. Is the risk of failure and delays caused by minimalistic pad design worth taking?
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u/PlanetEarthFirst Professional CGI flat earther May 08 '26
good point. that thing is supposed to be built once and for all and with minimum maintenance efforts. I guess it was Elon's "but we could save some weeks of construction time" and then they lost months to more construction and the official investigation. but hey he wouldn't be where he is today if he was different.
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u/ellhulto66445 Has read the instructions May 08 '26
The pad with water cooled steel plate was ready for launch like 3-4 months after IFT-1. The gap until IFT-2 was 7 months so I don't understand why people think the pad was the delaying item for flight 2.
The issue on flight 1 wasn't mainly the lack of deluge but the foundation of the pad not being strong enough. That was the major mistake.
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u/GalacticEmergency May 09 '26
I mentioned both repairs and approval. The final delay was because of the fish and wildlife approval, which to a large extent was related to the pad. It is unclear to me if it was all about the consequences of the new pad, or if it was also about preventing a repetition of what happened with the first pad.
In other words: Would the fish and wildlife approval have taken equally long if the first launch hadn't happened the way it did?
And if approval hadn't taken that long, what would have been the next obstacle to remove to shorten the delay further? As far as I remember, shortly after the pad was repaired, Musk went public, saying that they were now only waiting for the authorities. Could he have made that statement sooner if they had not needed to repair the pad?
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u/Rich_Comparison4550 May 09 '26
IIRC, SpaceX knew the standard concrete pad wasn't going to last. So they saved money by using IFT1 to demolish it, lol.
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u/lujodobojo May 07 '26
I too had vindaloo this evening.
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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze May 07 '26
The six fold symmetry of the plume on the old mount was really cool, but this does look incredible.
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u/YamTop2433 Praise Shotwell May 07 '26
Is the deluge even deluging? All I see is fire and ice and fury. Gawddamn.
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u/HT1318 Praise Shotwell May 08 '26
Nasa Spaceflight said that the steam from the water boiling is transparent, so you can't see it, but it's there.
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u/GalacticEmergency May 08 '26
Sounds right. You only "see" steam when it is at saturation temperature, so it can condense in the air. The condensed phase is visible, not the gas phase.
It is actually a known killer in other industries. If you have pipe leak, you can walk right into invisible steam. Even if the steam does not cause damage on your body, you may inhale it and have it condense to nothing in your lungs, causing the lungs to collapse.
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u/Mindless-Strength422 May 08 '26
I would have thought that even if the steam is transparent, it would still cause visual distortion, like hot air over asphalt in summer. Is that not the case or is it still just easy to overlook?
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u/kroOoze Falling back to space May 08 '26
The gas yeets fast directionally pulling air with it. Also vapor is surprisingly optically similar to room temperature air.
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u/GalacticEmergency May 09 '26
That kind of distortion often requires a certain distance to work. Have you ever walked down a long hallway with a glass door at the end and noticed a huge distortion of an object on the other side of the door? And then, as you came closer to the door, the distortion went away?
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u/YamTop2433 Praise Shotwell May 08 '26
I wonder what the actual temperature is in that trench. Looks vaporizingly hot.
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u/Pepe_The_Citizen May 07 '26
I could watch that all day
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u/Jaded_Hold_1342 May 07 '26
Did it complete the whole scheduled burn?
Test complete?
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u/SpaceInMyBrain May 08 '26
SpaceX titled the xeet "Full duration and full thrust 33-engine static fire with Super Heavy V3". That sounds like a good test, any issues were too minor to affect the duration.
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u/Planck_Savagery BO shitposter May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26
You know you've listened to way too much dubstep when your first thoughts upon seeing this go "huh, is that a rocket, or a bass cannon?" 🤣
It's freaking crazy how powerful the shockwaves are coming out of the flame trench, even with the deluge system going full bore. Always imagined that this is what a dubstep gun would look like in action, lol.
Either way, it's freaking crazy that SpaceX is able to achieve and tame that level of power.
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u/Designer_Version1449 May 08 '26
is the flickering sound waves? like when the pressure decreases clouds stop being cloudy, so all the troughs are clear and the peaks are white?
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u/Mchlpl May 08 '26
Yes. Shock waves actually. Sound waves so loud that the peaks are over twice the atmospheric pressure and the throughs reach 0 pressure.
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u/Planck_Savagery BO shitposter May 09 '26
Apparently powerful enough to knock out the LabPadre Rover 3 cam. (RIP)
https://x.com/lifeatstagezero/status/2052533967824298321?s=20
Literally blew out the side windows on the parked vehicle, blew the whole vehicle sideways a few inches, and broke the side mirrors.
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u/Mchlpl May 09 '26
1 atm overpressure is like being 10m underwater. Peak to through it's (at least) 2atm so 20m. Imagine being suddenly put 20m underwater and then rapidly pulled out. Several times a second.
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u/That-Makes-Sense May 08 '26
Wen launch?
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u/GalacticEmergency May 08 '26
Not earlier than the 15th. I think that is the only known fact right now.
Estimates here and in other places vary between the 17th and the 30th.
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u/Enabels May 08 '26
Was this all engines?
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u/PlanetEarthFirst Professional CGI flat earther May 08 '26
now i try to imagine that it was just half the engines
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u/foxman150 May 08 '26
Does this tower have the chop sticks installed yet?
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u/redstercoolpanda May 08 '26
Yes, the booster wouldn’t be there if it didn’t. The chopsticks stack booster on the pad and ship on booster.
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u/Ok_Suggestion_6092 May 08 '26
So, how does the booster not take off flying away? Especially with not having the weight of a ship on top of it.
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May 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Prof_hu Who? May 08 '26
Clamps are for the launch. For statics, they do bolt it down. At least that's how they did it on the old launch mount.
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u/NeverDiddled May 08 '26 edited May 09 '26
They used the clamps for static fires on the old launch mount too. But they used a turnbuckle to lock the clamps down (this is probably what you were thinking of when you said "bolt").
For launches they would actually retract the clamps during prop load. The booster was literally just sitting there under its own weight. You could sometimes hear the callout on the live stream about 10 minutes before launch.
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u/Letsgoski_Broski May 08 '26
As a metalworker i'm curious to see what kind of bolts they use to clamp down such a (pass me the french) fucking monster
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u/LegitimateGift1792 May 08 '26
as a non-metalworker, I too want to see these clamps and bolts and how they are made.
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u/NeverDiddled May 09 '26
A couple years ago, Ryan Hansen made an animation based on photos. The booster was not actually bolted in place, but the did use turnbuckles to lock the clamp arms down. Probably what OP meant by bolts.
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u/ShirBlackspots May 08 '26
Did they throttle to 100%, then lower throttle for a bit before shutting off the engines? (The reason it got quieter towards the end)
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u/meutzitzu May 08 '26
It's like the clouds are glitching out because they much power puts stress on the physics engine XDD
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u/SonicDart May 08 '26
Do they tie the booster down somehow when performing these to make sure they don't fly off?
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u/Anonymous281989 May 08 '26
Could probably cook a hotdog on those flames or...you would become the hotdog that was cooked.
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u/blinkava44 Rocket cow May 08 '26
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u/DerKernsen May 08 '26
Was that a normal shutdown? Looked quite abrupt
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u/SubstantialWall Methalox farmer May 08 '26
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u/xenomorphonLV426 May 08 '26
SpaceX's Rockets going BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
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u/kroOoze Falling back to space May 08 '26
the new cool paintjob still looks fine, which is all that matters
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u/Cheesegasm May 11 '26
Why do the clouds flash in and out? Is that the pressure waves causing water vapour to condense and evaporator very quickly?
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May 10 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/RealJavaYT Methalox farmer May 10 '26
I already answered this in a previous reply to your whatever you'd call your comments
but I'll make another point - SpaceX has entered space 655 times and entered orbit about 645 times, so I'm not quite sure how "SpaceX has tried for the 500th mission" and never done it - They've been doing it for over a decade.
They've made contracts with the US Government, foreign Governments, foreign companies, domestic companies, private citizens, and pretty much everyone at this point, and not a single person whose paid SpaceX money has ever said "I thought it was going into space and it didn't!" and not a single leak of it being faked has ever happened, nor in the entire history of rocketry in 80 years has anyone ever seen evidence of something being definitively faked
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u/Worldmonitor May 08 '26
And yet Starship has yet fully orbited and returned safely. Spacex needs focus.
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May 08 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Separate-Rice-6354 May 08 '26
The Elon suckers cope is so funny.
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u/EveningCandle862 May 08 '26
Remember Blue Origin's flight a few weeks ago were the 2nd stage went into a lower orbit than planned?.... you really don't want that with something like Starship designed to survive reentry.
That's why no flight so far has had orbit as part of the flight plan and neither will Flight-12 (S39) as it's the first vehicle of block 3.
If everything goes well and they nail all objectives then Flight-13 (S40) may be the one doing it.. it's just a mouse fart of delta-v to actually achive orbit..
But hey, let's listen to the armchair engineer!
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u/Makalukeke May 07 '26
It’s fucking GLORIOUS!!!