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SpaceX Has Finally Figured Out Why Starship Exploded, And The Reason Is Utterly Embarrassing
(www.planetearthandbeyond.co)
this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2025
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Two engines exploded, blowing the back of the ship up, causing the ship to tumble, which lead to loss of communication a few minutes later. Abort was absolutely the right call. Saying communications need to be better is like saying you need a better bandaid for your stump of an arm after you blew it off with a grenade.
The communications failed because the ship was spinning faster and faster, and eventually the antenna tracking couldn't keep up.
As soon as the engines exploded, the mission was dead, so the best thing is to abort, which is what they did.
Scott Manley analysis, shows the pic of the missing engines. https://youtu.be/kJCjGt7jUkU
If they had control when the first 3, then 4 engines failed, why didnβt they shut off the remaining 2 engines that would go on to spin the rocket?
According to Manley, the remaining engines were non-vectoring, so there was never a way to keep flying straight with lopsided thrust. Shutting down would have kept it from spinning and allowed more data acquisition before aborting.
You saying shut down the engines from the ground? The vehicle computer would have a much better understanding of the system than the people on the ground during those first minutes. I'm guessing they just needed to trust their programming at that point.
If youβre talking milliseconds, yes, but it was many seconds between losing the engines and aborting. If they have the nasa level of engineers monitoring this, they sh out k f have noticed pretty fast. Either one should have shut them down faster.
Even the camera director had noticed and cut away to the studio.