That was outstanding! Every Raptor, full burn, successful staging, full flight to SECO, no apparent damage to the pad, and…

FTS works!

Way to go SpaceX. I can’t wait for IFT 3.

For those of us who were sleeping at 7:30 here's the playback:

https://www.youtube.com/live/s-ZwElJpTT ... gA0EiGkNtB

No mention of the launch pad condition after liftoff but I didn't see any debris flying when they lit the engines.

The video of the booster return shows the problem; they got twelve out of thirteen engines started but as the booster swung around they lost them in a cascade. That wouldn’t work for the return and so the booster was terminated, probably manually.

Raptors are notorious for being hard to light. My guess is that they balked at the high pressure stream of air that they were flying against and they snuffed out like candles. As successful as this flight test was, that’s a BDD from a reusability perspective.

Understatement of the year..."a rapid unexpected disassembly". In the old days this was "it blew up".

The term R.U.D. has been around for a very long time. It’s always been used as a tongue in cheek reference to something coming apart on its own, or with help. It gained popularity in the 2010s, possibly coming from its use in Kerbal Space Program.

I suspect the hot staging popped the top of the can causing autogenous pressure loss and then power is gone.
All the FTS is Autonomous according to everything I’ve seen.

I could see that if the inital damage was relatively minor and then progressed. The way that the engines lit and then cascaded off long after the staging was complete and the vehicle was turned around has me wondering if it was something else. Also I didn’t see any substantial venting of fuel or oxidizer that you would get from your scenario.

I hope that it’s as simple as “make the lid stronger”.

The SpaceX geeks have analyzed the footage and consensus is leaning toward one engine taking out surrounding engines until the FTS logic was satisfied, which would be loss of two gimbaling engines

Good news is that it demonstrated the FTS works better than last time

That’s strange. I saw nothing to suggest that any engine did something that affected any others. If that indeed happened then they have a major design problem.

All of the boost back engines were gimbaling. All but a few were off before the FTS activated.

The 33 looked great this time.
Hopefully they will dribble us out some video and data.

I wonder what the NASA plane could see or where it was relative to the remains

The term R.U.D. has been around for a very long time. It’s always been used as a tongue in cheek reference to something coming apart on its own, or with help. It gained popularity in the 2010s, possibly coming from its use in Kerbal Space Program.

Glad that they managed to light all 33 Raptors for the ascent!

https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1725879871115833705

Check this John, they had to resync the vid and telemetry but this one supports the prevailing theory

That’s just the first half of the engine flame outs. Watch this starting at the 3:09 mark and watch them all flame out. I think the last 6 might have been a commanded shutdown before FTS.
https://www.youtube.com/live/s-ZwElJpTT ... jorTL1uWmK

I’d love to be a fly on their data and video wall.

Tj