Way back in 2016, when the SpaceX YouTube channel uploaded a video on their then-planned “Interplanetary Transit System” or “ITS”, as super-heavy launch vehicle which would, in the following years, evolve into what we now know as Starship and the SpaceX Super Heavy booster. Slightly scaled down, but still a massive system which had one trait that I, and others, made the mistake of happening to point out: The high number of engines on the vehicle giving it an odd similarity to the Soviet N-1 booster, famous for failing catastrophically in all 4 of its test flights.
Commenting simply about the similarity resulted in me getting quite the scorn of what I would eventually call the SpaceX Cultists: in fact, this event was the point where my opinion of the entire SpaceX fanbase went from finding them a bit obsessive to me feeling they were, quite simply, very cult-like in their obsession over SpaceX supremacy in humanities role in space.
I previously shared excerpts from this event, and still have the archive (because I archive damn near everything and then store it on random external drives) but I’m not going to focus on it here. It suffices to say that many felt my concerns were meaningless, even when I explained quite simply that more parts = more chance for failure: that is to say, if there are more engines the chance of any one failing is higher — if that engine was to fail catastrophically, then all the worse for the launch system. A pretty basic concept.
Hell, I wasn’t explicitly implying that it would fail, but simply that I personally found the “more smaller engines” method to be concerning. Saturn V used 5 massive F-1 Engines, Super Heavy uses 33 smaller Raptor engines. My logic was only concern that, as stated above, with more engines you have more individual chances for a major failure. People claimed “redundancy” which I was not contesting, as it wasn’t my point. Yeah, an engine or two goes out and you’re still kicking. The Saturn V 1st and 2nd stages could operate with an engine failure or two, depending on when in the launch the failure happened (this happening on Apollo 6 and 13 on the second stages but those missions still made it to orbit — Apollo 6 may have more of limped into orbit but it made it.
Now, the crazy thing is, in doing on-the-fly research as I write this, apparently the earliest designs, from the mid 2000’s for what would become Super Heavy / Starship used engines that would be comparable to the massive F-1 of the Saturn V. This would be changed to a larger cluster of smaller Raptor engines which, at the time in 2016 when the ITS video in question was uploaded, was set to be 42 engines, as opposed to the 33 that are in the production vehicle. This was, of course, due to a scaling down of the entire (still massive) system, but still, my concerns in retrospect seem even more valid for something that many more engines, do they not?
Move to April of 2023, when I originally should have written this article. The first all-up flight of the SpaceX Super-Heavy / Starship system happens. Some engines failed shortly after launch and the issue cascaded up until around staging, where the booster entered a spin and had to be destroyed.
The failure was basically what I was concerned might happen. To be fair, and I must stress this lest someone accuse me of not thinking such — A failure of this nature could happen to any booster. I never said it wouldn’t. However, with so many engines clustered so close together a hypothetical source of damage, like pressure from ignition or the reported small explosion in the engine cluster during flight, could disable several engines at once, which is exactly what appears to have happened.
The second flight in November of 2023 went better: The booster didn’t outright fail until the boostback burn, and the Starship vehicle itself was lost when there was a fire and explosion as it vented excess LOX.
I don’t have much commentary on that launch, as it followed a more typical failure mode. However, I still feel it vindicated my concerns over so many clustered engines and getting them all to work together flawlessly, which they would need to for this massive vehicle to come back and land safely for the proposed reuse that everyone self-manipulates over.
Move to Mach of 2024 and the third test. This flight marked Starship making it to a suborbital trajectory (not a proper orbital trajectory as many state.) Only 3 engines started for boost-back of the Super Heavy booster, instead of the planned 13 and, of course 2 of the ignited engines failed and the booster was lost (not like it wouldn’t have been had they not failed — 3 out of 13 is not enough to land that thing, even in the ocean.)
Upon re-entry, Starship itself was lost. While the world looked at the pretty ionizing radiation and thought “wow, it’s amazing, go SpaceX” when that phenomena happened 134 times with the Space Shuttle, they of course ignored the fact that the booster and the payload — That is to say, the actual Starship vehicle, were lost.
Yet, I see on Wikipedia that this was somehow a success? No, it wasn’t. Not by a long shot. This was another failure that, again, before you put words in my mouth, I’m not saying can’t be overcome, but I am saying demonstrates that, in so far as the Super Heavy booster component is concerned, my suggestion that more engines means a higher chance of something to go wrong was valid, and that, in the end, I was right.
I really wish I had left the comment I had originally written up on that video, so I could have gone back in April of 2023 and asked for an apology directly from those who wanted to give me shit for simply expressing a sensible concern based on history. Yes, I hold onto things, it’s a slightly damaging trait, but it must be understood that the event way back when was the point where I had to stop being a “fan” of SpaceX and start looking at their work, and the cult that follows them, far more critically.
Their explicit lack of actual interest in space and rocketry, I find, is incredibly damaging. Perpetual mental masturbation over the concern of re-usabuility, with no concern for actual mission success. Hell, it should say plenty that when you watch a SpaceX livestream they talk to the audience like they are 5 year olds who know nothing about the subject of rocketry.
That, however, is another article for another time. It feels good to not only finally get this piece out but to feel like I’m making a return-to-form in writing such an entry on a topic I care deeply about, and what I consider a minor, but still not-to-be-forgotten slight against me as a life-long fan of space and rocketry.
That’s it for now. More to come, as always.
1 Comment
Add a Comment