Comment by terramex a day ago
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:
Where can I find the heat tiles? Will they be landing near Puerto Rico?
Seen from an Airplane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zC0K0YZEzg
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.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DE54iL7xbZL/?igsh=dTNtZ2Q4aHl...
It's beautiful. Looks like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Looks like work of the Flight Termination System. Something measurable had to go very wrong.
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.
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.
> 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.
All of the exception handling was spent on the try/catch of the booster.
> Depends on the programmers I guess
It depends on the Air Force.
It wasn't FTS, it just blew up: https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1880033318936199643
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.
Yeah I thought about that some more and at that altitude and speed the FTS is usually already deactivated.
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.
Does anyone know where the debris landed? In the ocean? Or just burnt out in the atmosphere?