Indeed. The booster wasn’t actually designed for hot-staging in the first place, after all, they just bolted an extension on top to let it be tried out. The thought was likely “we known something’s going to break when we try this, but we want to know what breaks so we can fix it in the next one.”
The upper stage’s failure to achieve “orbit” was more disappointing, but still, it’s the first time it was up there going that high and that fast. I’m sure they got great data.
If the 1st stage failure was from fuel slosh and/or water hammer, that doesn’t seem related to the hot staging. Unless that caused a different flight profile around stage sep that increased loads?
If the 2nd stage failure started as a LOX leak, hopefully they had onboard cameras that show the source and help find a root cause.
I watched Scott Manley’s video analyzing the launch and he said that the booster experienced a sudden acceleration backward when the second stage ignited and pushed against it with more thrust than the booster was generating, which would have caused the liquids inside it to surge up and then drop back down again. Seems like that would produce a stronger hammer effect than the booster was originally designed for.
I could, of course, be misinterpreting the video. Or Scott could be wrong. Eventually SpaceX will tell us what really happened.
Indeed. The booster wasn’t actually designed for hot-staging in the first place, after all, they just bolted an extension on top to let it be tried out. The thought was likely “we known something’s going to break when we try this, but we want to know what breaks so we can fix it in the next one.”
The upper stage’s failure to achieve “orbit” was more disappointing, but still, it’s the first time it was up there going that high and that fast. I’m sure they got great data.
If the 1st stage failure was from fuel slosh and/or water hammer, that doesn’t seem related to the hot staging. Unless that caused a different flight profile around stage sep that increased loads?
If the 2nd stage failure started as a LOX leak, hopefully they had onboard cameras that show the source and help find a root cause.
I watched Scott Manley’s video analyzing the launch and he said that the booster experienced a sudden acceleration backward when the second stage ignited and pushed against it with more thrust than the booster was generating, which would have caused the liquids inside it to surge up and then drop back down again. Seems like that would produce a stronger hammer effect than the booster was originally designed for.
I could, of course, be misinterpreting the video. Or Scott could be wrong. Eventually SpaceX will tell us what really happened.