[terramex]

Looks like second stage broke up over Caribbean, videos of the debris (as seen from ground):

https://x.com/deankolson87/status/1880026759133032662?t=HdHF...

https://x.com/realcamtem/status/1880026604472266800

https://x.com/adavenport354/status/1880026262254809115

Moment of the breakup:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE52_hVSeQz/

[dpifke]

Preliminary indication is that we had an oxygen/fuel leak in the cavity above the ship engine firewall that was large enough to build pressure in excess of the vent capacity.

Apart from obviously double-checking for leaks, we will add fire suppression to that volume and probably increase vent area. Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1880060983734858130

[perihelions]

Reminds me of one of NASA's reckless ideas, abandoned after Challenger in 1986, to put a liquid hydrogen stage inside the cargo bay of the Shuttle orbiter [0]. That would have likely leaked inside that confined volume, and could plausibly have exploded in a similar way as Starship.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle-Centaur

- "The astronauts considered the Shuttle-Centaur missions to be riskiest Space Shuttle missions yet,[85] referring to Centaur as the "Death Star".[86]"

[raverbashing]

I'm not sure there's fire suppression effective enough for this type of leak (especially given rocket constraints)

[echelon]

Replying to this comment so people can see the incredible video of the breakup taken from a diverting aircraft:

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1i34dki/starship_...

[psunavy03]

Aerospace fire suppression is generally Halon, which would purge the cavity with inert gas.

[m4rtink]

Actually the Super Heavy (first stage) already uses heavy CO2 based fire suppression. Hopefully not that necessary in the long term, but should make it possible to get on with the testing in the short term.

[raverbashing]

That's interesting

However if you see the stream you can see one of the tanks rapidly emptied before loss of signal

It seems this was not survivable regardless of fire or not

[Alive-in-2025]

What is a long term solution for this? Is there something more than "build tanks that don't leak"? I'm sure spaceX has top design and materials experts, now what ;-).

[m4rtink]

I think its likely not the tanks but rather the plumbing to engines and the engines themselves leaking (sense lines, etc).

Next engine revision (Raptor 3) should help, as it is much simplified and quite less likely to leak or get damaged during flight.

[metalman]

just increased venting to keep any vapor concentrations of fuel and oxidiser below that capable of igniting, even simple baffling could suffice as the leaks may be trasitory and flowing out of blowoff valves, so possibly a known risk. Space x is also forgoeing much of the full system vibriatory tests, done on traditiinal 1 shot launches, and failure in presurised systems due to unknown resonance is common. Big question is did it just blow up, or did the automated abort, take it out, likely the latter or there would be a hold on the next launch.

[vessenes]

There’s no way that was anything but the automated abort — it was a comprehensive instantaneous rapid event. Or I guess I’d say, however it started, the automated abort kicked in and worked.

[spandrew]

It might not even be about fire suppression. Oxygen and different gases can pool oddly in different types of gravity. If oxygen was leaking, it may be as simple as making sure a vacuum de-gases a chamber before going full throttle.

We know nothing, but the test having good data on what went wrong is a great starting point.

[varjag]

If you can displace the oxidizer/air remaining in the volume why not.

[littlestymaar]

The initial tweet says:

> we had an oxygen/fuel leak

If that's correct, then you can't just remove air. The only option would be to cool things down so it stops burning.

[shellfishgene]

If it was really an oxygen/fuel mix burning I don't think you can do much of anything to stop that.

[littlestymaar]

If you cooled the mixture at low enough temperature, you'd stop it from burning (like when you pour water on top of a camp fire), but it's not clear how you're supposed to do that in a spaceship where you can't carry a few tons of water for your sprinklers.

[anentropic]

I wonder if it's related to the loose panel flapping about at the left of the screen here: https://youtu.be/qzWMEegqbLs?si=aUlI6zfkH3bZCmVm&t=111

[Alive-in-2025]

This sounds like one of those "and also" things. I'd say you add fire suppression AND ALSO try more to reduce leaks. It's got to be really difficult to build huge massive tanks that hold oxygen and other gases under pressure (liquid methane too will have some vapor of course). Are leaks inherently going to happen?

This is meant to be a human rated ship of course, how will you reduce this danger? I know this stuff is hard, but you can't just iterate and say starship 57 has had 3 flights without leaks, we got it now. Since I have no expertise here, I can imagine all kinds of unlikely workarounds like holding the gas under lower pressure with humans on board or something to reduce the risk.

[wat10000]

This might be one of those components where it just needs to be built without problems, and improved safety means fixing individual design and manufacturing flaws as you find them, until you’ve hopefully got them all.

This can work. Fundamental structural components of airliners just can’t fail without killing everyone, and high reliability is achieved with careful design, manufacturing, testing, and inspection. I’m not sure if a gigantic non-leaky tank is harder to pull off that way, but they might have to regardless.

We’re going to have to accept that space travel is going to be inherently dangerous for the foreseeable future. Starship is in a good position to improve this, because it should fly frequently (more opportunities to discover and fix problems) and the non-manned variant is very similar to the manned variant (you can discover many problems without killing people). But there are inherent limitations. There’s just not as much capacity for redundancy. The engines have to be clustered so fratricide or common failure modes are going to me more likely. Losing all the engines is guaranteed death on Starship, versus a good chance to survive in an airliner.

All other practical considerations aside, I think this alone sinks any possibility of using Starship for Earth-to-Earth travel as has been proposed by SpaceX.

[WalterBright]

High reliability of airliners is achieved by having redundancy of all critical parts. The idea is no single failure can cause a crash.

For example, if system A has a failure probability of 10%, if A is redundant with another A', the combined failure probability is 1%.

That of course presumes that A and A' are not connected.

[wat10000]

Yes for systems, not always for structure. A failed wing spar means everybody dies. For real-world examples, there were two 747 crashes caused by improper repairs to a rear pressure bulkhead or aircraft skin. When the repairs eventually failed, the explosive decompression caused catastrophic damage to the tail in one instance, and total structural failure resulting in a mid-air breakup in the other.

The response to this was to make sure repairs are carried out correctly so the structure doesn’t fail, not to somehow make two redundant bulkheads or two skins.

[WalterBright]

The wing spar is dual, too.

The idea is to design the airplane to survive an explosive decompression failure, not pretend that explosive decompression doesn't happen. For example, on the DC-10, the floor collapsed from explosive decompression, jamming the control cables and causing a horrendous crash.

The fix was not preventing explosive decompression. The fix (on the 757) was to locate the redundant set of control cables along the ceiling. Also, blowout panels were put in the floor so the floor wouldn't collapse.

It's not always practical to fix an older design like the 747. When it isn't practical, a stepped-up inspection protocol is added.

P.S. The 747 was designed to survive a decompression. The oversight was nobody realized that a failure of the rear bulkhead could destroy the tail section. Things like that happen in complex systems, and an airliner is incredibly complicated.

P.P.S. When I was a newbie at Boeing, I asked about the wing spar, too. That's how I know it is dual!

[mavhc]

Given that a) most human rated rockets have had 0 flights before use, and b) I'd expect each starship to have at least 10 flights, and at least 100 in total without mishap before launching, the statistics should be good

[wat10000]

I don’t think (a) is true. The Shuttle flew with people on its maiden voyage, but that’s the only one I can think of.

(b) is true and should make it substantially safer than other launch systems. But given how narrow the margins are for something going wrong (zero ability to land safely with all engines dead, for example) it’s still going to be pretty dangerous compared to more mundane forms of travel.

[laverya]

Most rockets flew test flights before sticking people inside the same model, but most rockets are also single use and so each stack is fundamentally new.

A future starship could plausibly be the first rocket to fly to space unmanned, return, and then fly humans to space!

[WalterBright]

Lindbergh's Spirit of St Louis had the main fuel tank directly in front of him. This was in spite of his primal fear of being burned alive. In some airplanes you sit on the fuel tank.

[api]

Would be unpleasant if there was crew. Of course this thing is pretty far from human eating.

[onion2k]

Would be unpleasant if there was crew.

19 people have died in the 391 crewed space missions humans have done so far. The risk of dying is very high. Starship is unlikely to change that, although the commoditization of space flight could have reduce the risk simply by making problems easier to spot because there's more flights.

[gr3ml1n]

The higher frequency of launches seems likely to have a big impact on reliability. It's no different than deploying once per day vs once per month. The more you do it, the more edge cases you hit and the more reliable you can make it.

SpaceX also has a simplification streak: the Raptor engines being the canonical example. Lower complexity generally means less unexpected failure modes.

[api]

My #1 rule for all engineering: simplicity is harder than complexity.

I truly wish more software engineers thought this way. I see a lot of mentality in software where people are even impressed by complexity, like "wow what a complex system!" like it's a good thing. It's not. It's a sign that no effort has been put into understanding the problem domain conceptually, or that no discipline has been followed around reducing the number of systems or restraint over adding new ones.

I've seen incredibly good software engineers join teams and have net negative lines of code contributed for some time.

If we ever encountered, say, an alien race millions of years ahead of us on this kind of technology curve, I think one of the things that would strike us would be the simplicity of their technology. It would be like everything is a direct response and fit to the laws of physics with nothing extraneous. Their software -- assuming they still use computers as we understand them -- would be functional bliss that directly represented the problem domain, with every state a pure function of previous state.

We might get to this kind of software eventually. This is still a young field. Simplicity, being harder than complexity, often takes time and iteration to achieve. Often there's a complexity bloat followed by a shake out, then repeat, over many cycles.

[psunavy03]

"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[exe34]

> Their software -- assuming they still use computers as we understand them -- would be functional bliss that directly represented the problem domain, with every state a pure function of previous state.

I love that this is also a model of reality. Everything is made of differential equations.

[WalterBright]

I've written something good when others look at it and say: "pshaw, anyone could have written that!"

[londons_explore]

> SpaceX also has a simplification streak: the Raptor engines being the canonical example.

Not necessarily. Your engine which used to have 200 sensors perhaps now only has 8. But you now don't know when temperatures were close to melting point in a specific part of the engine. When something goes wrong, you are less likely to identify the precise cause because you have less data.

Many of those sensors are not to enable the rocket to fly at all, but merely for later data analysis to know if anything was close to failure.

In yesterdays launch, if the engines had more sensors musk probably wouldn't have said "an oxygen/fuel leak", but would have been able to say "Engine #7 had an oxygen leak at the inlet pipe, as shown by the loud whistling noise detected by engine #7's microphone array"

[api]

I could imagine the risk going down to a few times air travel after 50+ years of operating a mature launch system.

[BurningFrog]

Modern space ships are very likely to change that, as designs mature and improve.

Early aviation was extremely dangerous. Now a plane is among the safest places to be.

[mark-r]

Planes are safe because investigators were diligent about going to every crash and investigating to find the root cause. That's a lot more difficult when your evidence is dispersed to the stars or burns up on re-entry.

[BurningFrog]

Modern space ships are full of sensors measuring everything interesting.

That data is streamed to Earth, so you usually have pretty good indication of what happened, even if your ship is now a puff of stratospheric smoke .

[throw0101a]

> (as seen from ground)

As seen from a plane in the air with the break up right in front of it:

https://old.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1i34dki/starship_...

[mrandish]

While the video post does mention "Right in front of us", and it may have appeared that way to the pilots, it wasn't. Gauging relative distance and altitude between aircraft in flight can be notoriously deceptive even to experts, especially in the case of intensely bright, massive, unfamiliar objects at very high speed and great distance.

The RUD was in orbit over 146 kilometers up and >13,000 mph. I'm sure using the FlightAware tracking data someone will work out the actual distance and altitude delta between that plane and the Starship 7 orbital debris. I suspect it was many dozens of miles away and probably still nearly orbital in altitude (~100km).

Spectacular light show though...

[aredox]

Stupid comment. Several flights had to be diverted because of the break-up, and anyone in flight at that time would be rightly concerned about barely-visible high-speed shrapnel showering a much larger area than where the visible debris are - especially when you are responsible for keeping your hundreds of passengers safe in a very unexpected situation with no rehearsed procedure to follow.

[stouset]

Nobody is saying it wasn’t prudent to divert.

It would have been impossible for the pilot to know if that debris was shortly in front of them and at co-altitude or extremely far in front of them and at a significantly higher altitude.

In this case it was almost certainly the latter. But the uncertainty alone was enough to warrant diverting.

> Stupid comment.

Aim higher on HN.

[javawizard]

Ok, this:

> Stupid comment

got me. There's literally an HN rule about this: [0]

> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

I feel like the world would be a better place if people would tone down the ad-hominem in their day-to-day discourse just a little bit.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[yellowapple]

> I feel like the world would be a better place if people would tone down the ad-hominem in their day-to-day discourse just a little bit.

    PRAGMA sarcasm = ON;

No, fuck you, I'm going to call you names and shit all over you over a mild disagreement!

    PRAGMA sarcasm = OFF;

But yes, one of the refreshing things about HN is that even when conversations get heated, the participants tend to at least keep to the topic and respect one another / assume good faith. There will of course always be slip-ups on that (I'd be lying if I said I wasn't guilty of that on occasion), but they've managed to be pretty rare (and/or quickly caught by the admins) even as HN has grown in popularity.

[pineaux]

this.

[kryptn]

It's in front of them enough.

[mrandish]

Sure. In a similar way as when the moon is low on the horizon and I stand in my back yard facing it. There's the moon. It's right in front of me... :-)

[kryptn]

in a way that if they kept their heading there was a higher than acceptable risk of impact and they had to divert, yes.

[mrandish]

As I said, the debris was likely closer to around ~100km in altitude. Commercial airliners fly around ~10km in altitude. Appearing to be at a similar altitude as the plane and "in front" of it was an optical illusion because the debris was intensely bright, very far away, very high and moving several times faster than a bullet. While we don't have exact data yet, I believe it is highly likely there was zero chance of that plane ever hitting that debris given their relative positions. It couldn't even if the pilots weren't mistaken about how close the debris was and they had intentionally tried to hit it. The debris was too far, too high and moving at hypersonic speeds (hence the metal being white hot from atmospheric friction).

Starship's flight paths are carefully calculated by SpaceX and the FAA to achieve this exact outcome. In the event of a RUD near orbit, little to no debris will survive reentry. Any that does survive won't reach the surface (or aircraft in flight) until it is far out into the Atlantic Ocean away from land, people, flight paths and shipping lanes. For Starship launches the FAA temporarily closes a large amount of space in the Gulf of Mexico to air and ship traffic because that's where Starship is low and slow enough for debris to be a threat to aircraft. These planes were flying in the Caribbean, where there was no FAA NOTAM closing their airspace because by the time Starship is over the Caribbean, it's in orbit. If there's a RUD over the Caribbean it's already too high and going too fast for debris to be a threat to aircraft or people anywhere near the Carribean. The only "threat" in the Caribbean today was from anyone being distracted by the pretty light show in orbit far above them (that looked deceptively close from some angles).

[InDubioProRubio]

The ISS is in the front of every plane and behind it every 90 minutes.

[muteh]

To be clear, you’re claiming that this was in fact behind them?

[fastball]

No, I think he is claiming that if they kept flying straight they would not collide with any debris.

[varjag]

Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion

[gcanyon]

I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.

[ashoeafoot]

Fiery the angels fell, Deep thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc

[IAmGraydon]

That is absolutely insane. Honestly, I would probably assume a MIRV given the current environment.

[Cu3PO42]

What a strangely beautiful sight. While I was excited to see ship land, I'm also happy I get to see videos of this!

[mrandish]

Yes, both spectacular and beautiful. I guess Starship can now say what the legendary comedy actress (and sex symbol) of early cinema Mae West said:

"When I'm good... I'm very good. But when I'm bad... I'm even better." :-)

Combined with another tower catch, that's two spectacular shows for the price of one. Hopefully the onboard diagnostic telemetry immediately prior to the RUD is enough to identify the root cause so it can be corrected.

[Molitor5901]

I felt.. bad watching that breakup, it reminded me of Columbia.

[dpifke]

Which coincidentally launched 22 years ago today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-107

[Molitor5901]

Seeing it streak across the sky just reminded me of how important this is and how critically SpaceX must get it right before sending anyone up. I will never forget the trepidation of watching Bob and Doug go up and in tears when it was clear they made it.

[inglor_cz]

OTOH I remembered Columbia too and I felt good knowing that Starship is being tested thoroughly without jeopardizing the crew.

The space-shuttle could not fly to the orbit automatically. It had to have people on board, and the first flight, IIRC, came close to a disaster.

[birdman3131]

I remember being woken up by the thunder from Columbia.

Lost it over the years but I used to have a photo of about 20 vans of people parked on our property doing the search for debris. Don't think they found any on our land but there was a 3 ft chunk about 5 miles down the road.

[wingspar]

I remember waiting for the sonic boom, that never came…

[xattt]

I don’t know why you’re getting downvoted, but I thought this too.

[Molitor5901]

It's a weird deja vu feeling of uneasiness. I can't explain it, but I think also Columbia really hit me as my generation's Challenger.

[throitallaway]

Meta-commentary is annoying (yes, I realize the irony.)

[afavour]

As long as the debris has no effect wherever it lands, I agree with you

[verzali]

A lot of flights seem to be diverting to avoid it...

https://bsky.app/profile/flightradar24.com/post/3lfvhpgmqqc2...

[Kye]

Does SpaceX bother with NOTAM for its launches?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOTAM

It seems like the flights should have been planned around it so no diversion would be needed.

[enragedcacti]

They do but its not clear to me whether the area where it broke up was actually included in the original NOTAM. The NOTMAR definitely does not according to the graphic shown on the NASASpaceflight stream. They are still live so I can't link a time code but something like -4:56 in this stream as of posting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nM3vGdanpw

[kla-s]

Since i couldn't find the time code in the video, i put a map together with both NOTAM and NOTMAR.

map: https://github.com/kla-s/Space/blob/main/Map_NOTMAR_NOTAM_Sp... description: https://github.com/kla-s/Space/tree/main

Lets hope this is the year of Linux desktop and i didn't violate any licenses or made big errors ;)

[sbuttgereit]

My understanding is that there are areas which are noted as being possible debris zones across the flight path, but that aircraft are not specifically told to avoid those areas unless there an actual event to which to respond.

If my understanding is correct, it seems sensible at least in a hand-wavy way: you have a few places where things are more likely to come down either unplanned or planned (immediately around the launch site and at the planned deorbit area), but then you have a wide swath of the world where, in a relatively localized area, you -might- have something come down with some warning that it will (just because the time it takes to get from altitude to where aircraft are). You close the priority areas, but you don't close the less likely areas pro-actively, but only do so reactively, it seems you'd achieve a balance between aircraft safety and air service disruptions.

[sbuttgereit]

Actually, this video is a good indication for exactly what transpired:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6hIXB62bUE

It's ATC audio captured during the event.

[Kye]

This video, the map elsewhere in this subthread, and the stream recording give a nicely detailed view into what went down. It seems like everything went like it was supposed to in terms of pre-warning, but based on the video the information didn't make it to pilots with coinciding flight plans until after the fact.

As far as I understand airline pilots have a high level of authority and diverting probably was the right call depending on the lag between seeing it and knowing what it was or if there was a risk of debris reaching them. They wouldn't necessarily know how high it got or what that means for debris.

[ralfd]

Understandable, but an over reaction. Any debris not burning up is falling down after minutes.

[Kye]

Would you bet hundreds of lives and millions of dollars on that?

[ricardobeat]

Yes. Space debris near orbiting speeds doesn't fall straight down, it's simple physics.

If anything planes much further downrange (thousands of km) should be diverted, not immediately under the re-entry point.

[dylan604]

More as long as there were no humans onboard

[ijidak]

Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

[mrandish]

The number of SpaceX video clips that I know are "actual things really happening" which still activate the involuntary "Sci-Fi / CGI effect" neurons in my brain is remarkable.

[bigiain]

Yeah. I know that feeling.

That tower catch. That _had_ to be a new version of Kerbal, right? The physics looked good, but there's no way that was real...

[mrandish]

Indeed. The one that still flips a bit in my brain is the two Falcon rockets landing in unison side by side. I'd say it was high-end CGI except no director would approve an effects shot of orbital rockets landing in such a perfect, cinematically choreographed way.

It would just be sent back to ILM marked "Good effort, but too obviously fake. Rework to be more realistic and resubmit."

[somenameforme]

Just to link that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbSwFU6tY1c&t=1793s

Such an unbelievable moment. And I also think an indicator of how much better society could be if we focused more on doing amazing things. The comments on YouTube are just filled with hope optimism and general awesomeness. FWIW that link goes straight to the moneyshot - it's always so much better if you watch it all the way through. It's an amazing broadcast.

[TMWNN]

Seeing a rocket land vertically goes against almost 70 years of what we "know" about rockets. Falcon 9 rockets landing on legs seem unnatural enough; now we have a rocket, the size of a 20-story building, landing on chopsticks.

There are lots of vertical-landing rockets ... in science fiction, and only before Sputnik in 1957. Once actual space programs came about and lots of engineers understood just how difficult landing a rocket is compared to launching it, they all went away. Fictional vehicles became more and more complex to make them "realistic" (that is, consistent with real spacecraft on the news), or just didn't bother with the details at all and went to quasi-magic technologies like in Star Wars and Star Trek.

SpaceX is taking us to the future by going with something from the past.

[TMWNN]

>What a strangely beautiful sight.

"My god, Bones, what have I done?"

[badgersnake]

It’s a pretty expensive way to make fireworks.

[dotancohen]

Excitement guaranteed

[olex]

Inadvertently perfect timing for this footage. Glowing and backlit by the setting sun, against clear and already darkening evening sky... couldn't plan the shot any better if you tried.

Let's hope no debris came down on anyone or anything apart from open water.

[andrewinardeer]

I take it if SpaceX debris hit and destroyed a boat the owner can claim damages from SpaceX?

Does international space law allow for this?

[ceejayoz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Liability_Convention

Only used once, when the Soviets dropped a nuclear reactor on Canada.

> States (countries) bear international responsibility for all space objects that are launched within their territory. This means that regardless of who launches the space object, if it was launched from State A's territory, or from State A's facility, or if State A caused the launch to happen, then State A is fully liable for damages that result from that space object.

[walrus01]

As I recall a village in Australia also billed NASA with their standard municipal littering fine, for skylab debris that landed there, and the bill was paid 20+ years later by a radio station as a publicity stunt.

[krick]

I feel like it should be updated. When it was written it wasn't like every Musk could launch high-orbit rockets on sundays. Only actual states did.

[dragonwriter]

The convention does not prevent national law from providing private liability which may come into play between entities subject to the jurisdiction of the same state or between the state who is liable to other states under the convention and entities operating within the state. So, there is no need to update the convention; the states from which private launches operate simply need adequate domestic law to cover both fully-internal liability and private launcher liability for claims against the government under the convention. (And the US generally does, with the basic regulatory regime being adopted and the private space launch industry operating in the 1980s; it is not an issue that arose with Musk/SpaceX.)

[condiment]

FAA launch licenses require substantial liability insurance. 500 million in this case.

https://drs.faa.gov/browse/excelExternalWindow/DRSDOCID17389...

[ceejayoz]

States can set whatever rules they like internally. The US can make SpaceX pay them back if they want.

[tcmart14]

No expert, but I would assume, the USA would front it, but then take a case against SpaceX. So it would be Boat Owner v. USA, then USA v. SpaceX shortly after. Although I could be totally wrong.

But yea, seems appropriate to update it or if that is going to be the process, write it in stone.

[oskarkk]

Every rocket flight has to be approved by the government. No launch until FAA (and also FCC) OK's it.

[twic]

Does the thing have to have got into space and then come back for this to apply?

[dr_orpheus]

But don't forget about a local government in Australia fining NASA $400 for littering after debris from Skylab re-entry landed there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylab#Re-entry_and_debris

[somenameforme]

Most things put into space are designed to burn upon uncontrolled descent through orbit. And then the overwhelming majority of Earth is water and even on land the overwhelming majority of land is either completely uninhabited or sparsely inhabited. And then even if against all odds somehow something doesn't burn up in the atmosphere, and somehow lands in a densely populated area - the odds of hitting a spot with somebody or something relevant on it is still quite low. The overall odds of actually hitting somewhere really bad are just astronomically low.

Nonetheless, recently NASA won the lottery when part of some batteries they jettisoned from the ISS ended up crashing through a house in Florida. [1] Oddly enough there are treaties on this, but only from an international perspective - landing on your own country was not covered! But I'm certain NASA will obviously make it right, as would SpaceX. If they didn't, then surely the family could easily sue as well.

[1] - https://www.space.com/space-debris-florida-family-nasa-lawsu...

[HPsquared]

It's probably similar to if a US ship crashed into your yacht.

[dylan604]

Rules of the water says smaller ship yields right of way to bigger ship. Sounds like you screwed up if your yacht got hit by a bigger ship. Of course that applies when the vessels are not tied up. If a big ship his a docked boat, that's an entirely different scenario

[cdbyr]

There is a whole hierarchy of right of way on the water, but a better rule of thumb is that the less maneuverable boat generally has priority.

https://www.whoi.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Abbreviated-...

[ta1243]

And of course there's the old tale:

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.

Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the South to avoid a collision.

Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.

Canadians: No. I say again, you divert YOUR course.

Americans: This is the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, the second largest ship in the United States' Atlantic fleet. We are accompanied by three destroyers, three cruisers and numerous support vessels. I demand that YOU change your course 15 degrees north, that's one five degrees north, or countermeasures will be undertaken to ensure the safety of this ship.

Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse_and_naval_vessel_ur...

[lmm]

> Rules of the water says smaller ship yields right of way to bigger ship. Sounds like you screwed up if your yacht got hit by a bigger ship.

Not necessarily. Steam is obliged to give way to sail, even when the sailing ship is much smaller.

[krisoft]

There is a lovely bit of complication with it! Not saying to correct you, just because i think it is a lovely bit of trivia even though it has nothing to do with space debris.

Both sailing and power driven vessels need to give ways to (among other things) “vessel restricted in her ability to maneuver”. And an aircraft carrier launching or recovering aircraft is considered to be restricted in her ability to maneuver (quite rightfully so, it is hard enough to land on them without the ship swerving left and right).

So that means that a mighty aircraft carrier needs to (at least according to the regulations) dodge tiny sailing ships, but once they start launching or recovering aircraft it is the responsibility of the sailing ship to avoid them.

Source: Rule 18 of the ColRegs (The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea 1972)

[dotancohen]

Where do Methalox-powered vehicles lie in this hierarchy?

And if the Starship is not under power yet falling and using the flaperons for control, is that considered "under sail" for purposes of right of way?

[hnburnsy]

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/23/nx-s1-5016923/space-debris-na...

[delichon]

Musk said that part of the launch licensing was a requirement to estimate the potential damage to whales in the ocean. He said that the odds turned out to be so low that in his opinion if a whale gets hit it had it coming.

https://jabberwocking.com/did-elon-musk-really-have-to-study...

[slippy]

If a whale got hit, would the whale be able to file for damages?

[9cb14c1ec0]

Given that the engine telemetry shown on the broadcast showed the engines going out one by one over a period of some seconds, I could easily imagine some sort of catastrophic failure on a single engine that cascaded.

[s1artibartfast]

It could be many things, plumbing to the engines, tank leak, ect. You could see fire on the control flap actuators, so the ship interior was engulfed in fire at the same time the first engine was out.

[consumer451]

Given the huge spread of the debris, it must have been a decent sized boom, no? I mean that's got to be 10's of miles wide in this video.

https://x.com/adavenport354/status/1880026262254809115

[walrus01]

the flight termination system is sort of a shaped charge that's designed to rupture the oxidizer and fuel tanks. Even if only a few % fuel remains, it'll be a big boom.

[s1artibartfast]

For context, The lower stage reportedly has 150 tons of propellant on board when it lands.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

The whole thing (booster et al) is around 1/3 as tall as the Eiffel tower... for context

[enragedcacti]

It wasn't FTS, it just blew up: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1880033318936199643

[oskarkk]

That doesn't explicitly say that it wasn't FTS. Activation of the FTS is never scheduled and it results in rapid disassembly. There's speculation that it flew for a significant time after losing telemetry. FTS is designed to activate if it goes off course (if it's still on course, it's better to keep flying).

[dmix]

Oh interesting, maybe that's why the debris looked so interesting

[nialv7]

do we know when this video was taken? this could just be ship breaking up during re-entry because it lost altitude control. not necessarily the moment of the primary failure.

[jiggawatts]

I noticed that the CH4 tank level was much lower than the O2 tank level. That suggests a leak.

[dotancohen]

Or FOD in the LOx supply lines. The methane would keep following, even with the turbopump shut down, until the valve closes. And the methane turbopump might actually keep running with reduced supply oxygen - Raptors have two turbopumps.

[m4rtink]

Yeah, most likely engine bay fire taking out systems one by one. Would be interesting to compare the telemetry cutoff with the video of explosion if possible. That could indicate if the fire even triggered an explosion, flight termination being activated or just reentry heating making the tanks explode.

[s1artibartfast]

Who knows where it started, but the fire was definitely in the payload bay in front of the header tanks if seen through the flap actuators during ascent, after speration at ~7:45 min

[Culonavirus]

The single instance of a fire that could be seen in the stream was in the hinge area of a bottom flap.

[idlewords]

There's a flickering flame briefly visible on the flap hinge of the second stage in the last footage it sent down.

[s1artibartfast]

Most Sci-Fi real footage I have ever seen.

Edit: Reminds me of "The Eye" from star wars Andor

https://youtu.be/9lrr0CWHDGA?t=43

[JumpCrisscross]

Wow. It reminds me of the comet scene from Andor. I wonder if suborbital pyrotechnics will become a thing one day.

[ralusek]

> one day

today!

[dylan604]

Watching those videos, my hand naturally looks for the roller ball from too much time playing missile command

[echoangle]

Probably one of the most expensive fireworks (but probably still cheaper than the first Ariane 5 launch), but it looks very cool.

[m4rtink]

I think the N1 test flights are also a contender. I still remember something about kerosene raining for 15 minutes after the explosion.

[cubefox]

More views:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=-S8CK6LgnD4

https://x.com/DavidCaroe/status/1880036195985682710

[Medox]

Even more:

https://x.com/jp_ouellette/status/1880029255813459973

https://x.com/Sitting_Analyst/status/1880033972748709995

https://x.com/nickpags45/status/1880028951885816056

[iquatemb]

Seen from an Airplane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zC0K0YZEzg

[RecycledEle]

I think this was the first test of StarShip v2. I'd be surprised if everything worked after they redesigned the whole StarShip. That would be like refactoring Microsoft Windows by hand-typing new code and expecting it to run without errors on the first try.

[krick]

I'm not worried about the Starship itself, but it looks kinda dangerous. Is it?

[dmix]

It's very likely it exploded on purpose by SpaceX after it wasn't showing good data (aka Flight Termination System). Specifically over water.

[r0m4n0]

Does anyone know the timing of when the breakup actually occurred?

I’m curious because I was on a flight to Puerto Rico from Florida at 3pm ET they diverted our flight. They didn’t really give us many details but said the “landing strips were closed”. Our friends on a slightly early flight diverted to ST Thomas. We were going to divert to a nearby airport in Puerto Rico (we were going to land in Aguadilla instead of San Juan) so I feel like these diversions wouldn’t be related but the timing seems pretty odd.

[espeed]

Depending on the precise launch time (4:36/4:37 PM CST) "Ship exploded at ≈T+00:08:26": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_flight_test_7

[TechTechTech]

Where will this debris land? Can it impact airplane routes?

[mh-]

https://x.com/DJSnM/status/1880032865209184354

>Commercial flights are turning around to avoid potential debris.

[ricardobeat]

That sounds... unlikely, to say the least. The ship blew up at 145km altitude over Turks and Caicos. Debris would fall thousands of kilometers to the east, if anything survives re-entry.

EDIT: at these speeds, over 20000km/h, the falling debris will travel a very long way before coming down. For satellite re-entry, the usual estimated ground contact point is something like 8000km+ downrange [1]. There is little chance debris would come anywhere near commercial flight altitude in the area around where the videos were made.

Apparently the planned splashdown was in the Indian Ocean near Australia, but this being an uncontrolled re-entry it could be far off from that, in either direction.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009457652...

[s1artibartfast]

Im not sure what part you are skeptical about. The debris videos filmed at Turks and Caicos are about 800km east of the explosion video in the Bahamas. They appear to be real. Still high but coming down fast.

Airspace is big, but I wouldn't want to fly a Jet with hundreds of people near it either.

I imagine aviation radar towers would only have the most limited data as the event unfolded.

[Retric]

Arlines are extremely cautious around these kinds of one off events.

It’s not about the calculated risks, but the uncertainty around if they have the right information in the first place. Sure it may have broken up at 145km miles, but what if someone messed up and it actually was 14.5km etc.

[rvnx]

Main priority to prevent accidents is to migrate away from this imperial system.

[mh-]

You can forget to carry a 1 in metric, too.

[dmurray]

No, airlines do not build in a safety factor sufficient to cover an important measurement being off by a factor of 10.

They don't ground flights because the pilot might load 2,000 litres of fuel instead of 20,000 litres. They don't take evasive action in case the other plane is travelling at 5,000 knots instead of 500 knots. They don't insist on a 30-km runway because the runway published as 3 km might only be 300 metres.

[Retric]

You misunderstood what I’m saying. Airlines have systems to validate the amount of fuel loaded and currently aboard aircraft that have been battle tested across decades including fixes due to past issues etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236

They don’t have that level of certainty around what altitude a rocket exploded, or other one off event.

[yuliyp]

Unlike fuel gauges, land surveys, and radar, fast-breaking news of explosions carries a significant risk of mistransmission or inaccuracy. They might know when/where the explosion occurred, but not necessarily have much confidence on how fast debris might have been ejected and in which directions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6hIXB62bUE ATC was being extremely cautious and diverting planes over quite a large area for quite some time to avoid the risk of debris hitting airplanes.

[andrewflnr]

Can you not understand the difference between a stated measurement of a runway or drain fuel requirement, and a stated location of a unique explosion that happened just a few minutes ago? Are you prepared to bet 200 lives that no one fat-fingered the number?

[Evidlo]

What if the information comes outside a system they control or organization they have no prior experience with?

[jjk166]

> at these speeds, over 20000km/h, the falling debris will travel a very long way before coming down.

Without air resistance, falling 145 km takes 172 seconds, which would result in the debris falling 956 km east of the explosion point if it were moving horizontal to the ground to begin with. With air resistance, it is substantially shorter as everything is decelerating proportional to the velocity cubed. If we approximate the terminal velocity of the debris as 500 km/h, to a first order approximation it would travel approximately 79 km east. The distance from West Caicos island to Grand Turk island is 138 km, for reference.

Satellites are moving much faster and at much higher altitude. Starship was not in orbit.

[seb1204]

Certainly causing delays.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-01-17/spacex-launch-to-go-a...

[mh-]

I'm not at all qualified to speculate. So I'll just add that for those unfamiliar with him, the person who posted that tweet is an astrophysicist with a popular YT channel.

[m4rtink]

Yeah, most likely an understandable overreacting givent the fireworks. But better safe than sorry in this case. :-)

[s1artibartfast]

east of Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. Draw a line from Boca Chia to Turks and keep going

[adolph]

A great circle line tho

[kylebenzle]

HN comments is just reading strangers steam of consciousness now?

[llm_trw]

Is there a video you don't need to log in to view?

[nomilk]

The fourth one (instagram) doesn't require login.

Side note: annoying that twitter/X requires login. I'd have sworn Elon said he was removing that requirement to login to view tweets (I think he discussed it with George Hotz).

Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkNkSQ42jg4&t=49m30s

Elon:

> This is insane. You shouldn't need a twitter account at all unless you need to write something

George:

> Why did you put the pop up back?

Elon:

> We should not be prohibiting read-only scroll

So there seems to be agreement that twitter shouldn't require an account to read (view) posts. The Twitter Space is from 23 Dec 2022 so perhaps things changed since.

[llm_trw]

Instagram requires login. Twitter does not.

[numpad0]

Twitter started requiring login post acquisition. Never did before.

[dylan604]

I just closed the login prompt for the insta link, and watched the video. So it does prompt one to login, but it definitely isn't required to watch the video from that link

[nomilk]

I'd have sworn I was unable to view tweets recently without logging in. But maybe I was wrong.

Instagram lets me view the video without login (I have to click the 'X' in the top-right of annoying popup, but I can watch it without logging in).

[andrewflnr]

It's not just you, they've been inconsistent about letting you see tweets.

[krick]

Musk's promises never age well, but, really, this particular dialog should be a meme.

[mgerdts]

https://mastodon.social/@BNONews/113840549980938951

[hrldcpr]

for the record I was able to watch without logging in, on Firefox Linux

[teractiveodular]

The last one is stage separation, not an explosion. You can clearly see the "exploded" rocket continuing to fly afterwards.

[olex]

Separation is much closer to the launch pad in Texas, the booster barely makes it downrange at all before turning around. This being filmed from the Bahamas with this much lateral velocity, gotta be the Ship breaking up. Likely the FTS triggered after enough engines failed that it couldn't make orbit / planned trajectory.

[s1artibartfast]

I dont think so. I think it is the breakup, with a large mass visible. most of the material will continue on until it parabolically renters and burns up in a visible manner

[Polizeiposaune]

No, if that was taken from the Bahamas, that's an explosion connected to the loss of the 2nd stage.

Staging happens closer to the Texas coast and I don't believe you'd have line of sight to it from the Bahamas.

[pixl97]

I'd say it might be after the loss of the craft. It was losing engines for a while then lost telemetry. This would have been a bit later when it started tumbling in the atmosphere on re-entry. Hopefully we'll know for sure in a few days.

[walrus01]

That's for sure not stage separation, that's an explosion from the FTS rupturing the ship tanks.

[ericcumbee]

If it was the FTS wouldn't the flight control systems send a message back to the ground saying "things are going sideways here, FTS Activated"

[anothertroll456]

Maybe it did, or is it public that it didn't? A possible sequence (very typical in rocket failures) is: fire, engine failure(s), loss of control, rupture due to aero forces or FTS activation, explosion due to propellant mixture. Not all of these have to happen, but it's a typical progression. Before the days of AFTS the FTS activation would be pretty delayed.

[pixl97]

Eh I'm thinking more it was a reentry explosion from pressurized tanks. Engines had failed a while before then.

[s1artibartfast]

This is over the Bahamas. Re-entry was much further east, near Turks and Caicos Islands.

Also, if a pressurized tank is reentering, that means the FTS failed to detonate.

[anothertroll456]

Nope. That's definitely an explosion (source: I'm in the rocket business). However it may not be an explosion of the whole stage. Probably of the engine section.

[anothertroll456]

Nevermind. It was probably the FTS like other people pointed out.

[hinkley]

It’s crazy how fast that ship is moving and how big the explosion was that it looks like something much, much lower in the air went boom. It was transitting the sky faster than a commercial aircraft does. So it gives an impression more like a private aircraft breaking up at 5-10k feet.

[ijidak]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE54iL7xbZL/?igsh=dTNtZ2Q4aHl...

It's beautiful. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.

[hinkley]

Cue Aerosmith song.

[oceanadventures]

I have a boat and want to pick up floating heat tiles in the ocean, do you think we can find the parts by Puerto Rico?

[pinoy420]

No

[raincole]

Does anyone know where the debris landed? In the ocean? Or just burnt out in the atmosphere?

[tjpnz]

Wasn't going fast enough to fully burn up. There'll be small pieces of debris scattered over quite a large area.

[inglor_cz]

Looks like work of the Flight Termination System. Something measurable had to go very wrong.

[olex]

While the telemetry was still going, you could see Ship engines going out one by one. Earlier when there was video there was what looked like flames visible inside one of the flap hinges, definitely shouldn't be there on ascent. Presumably something failed internally and caused the Ship to shut down before reaching target trajectory, at which point either FTS or the failure itself caused it to blow up, as seen on the Insta reel.

[enraged_camel]

On the NSF youtube channel they pointed out that at some point the methane indicator started decreasing much faster than the LOX indicator, which points to some sort of leak. It would explain why the engines started to shut down.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Something measurable had to go very wrong

Or slightly wrong. An FTS is programmed to be conservative. Particularly on unmanned flights. Doubly particularly on reëntry. Triply so on experiments bits.

[DeepYogurt]

Depends on the programmers I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[BuyMyBitcoins]

All of the exception handling was spent on the try/catch of the booster.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Depends on the programmers I guess

It depends on the Air Force.

[enragedcacti]

It wasn't FTS, it just blew up: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1880033318936199643

[anothertroll456]

That doesn't negate FTS.

[enragedcacti]

Imo if SpaceX thought it was possibly FTS they wouldn't say RUD. They still had telemetry for multiple seconds as it pitched wildly and engines failed, if FTS didn't trigger then it probably didn't at all.

[anothertroll456]

Yeah I thought about that some more and at that altitude and speed the FTS is usually already deactivated.

[oceanadventures]

Where can I find the heat tiles? Will they be landing near Puerto Rico?

[rkagerer]

What a show

[tsimionescu]

Another failure, another few months of figuring out why this isn't working and can't stick to its flight path. They caused chaos for many commercial planes, so they'll definitely need some full reports to the FTA to know what they're doing about this, why the debris is falling over flight paths, and so on.