Beware The Mob

The Nutball South African continues to prove he really, really is. This piece on his public post mortem of the Starship (how much did Grace and the boys get for letting him use the term?) blow up. In sum, it was worse than first reported.

One of the hallmarks of the SpaceX story is the use of smallish liquid engines tied in bundles. I suppose the theory was that there is redundancy in such protocol and therefore a more robust booster. Turns out, not so much.

The loss of the three engines caused Starship to lean to the side as it headed upward. "We do not normally expect a lean," Mr. Musk said. "It should be actually going straight up."

Well, of course it should go straight up. Even a first year physics student learns that unequal thrust causes the vehicle to slew in the direction of lower/lost thrust; on occasion aircraft pilots have been forced to steer using only unequal thrust. Apparently, the Nutball South African assumed that each and every one of the 33 engines in that booster would work perfectly every time. There's a balance between multiple units being positive (catastrophe avoiding redundancy) and negative (higher probability of failure). The Nutball South African, who claims to be an engineer, hasn't gotten that far in his thinking.

It was 85 seconds into the flight "where things really hit the fan," Mr. Musk said, when the rocket lost its ability to steer its direction by pointing the engine nozzles.

One might suppose that building a booster with 33 engines would mean that steering would be at a premium. Apparently not.

Here's the king of numbskull:

The other unexpected surprise was the shattering of concrete beneath the rocket at launch.

From reporting, the Nutball South African chose to ignore the learnings from NASA's launch pad history. If you ever seen footage of Saturn V launches, you'd have noted that the rocket exhaust exits to the side. That's how the launch pad was designed.

"This is certainly a candidate for hardest technical problem done by humans," Mr. Musk said.

Well, yeah, especially if you ignore the successful work of your technical ancestors. It would help if the Nutball South African knew about Newton's Laws of Motion: it makes not a whit of difference to a booster's efficiency if the exhaust is deflected sideways after it leaves the nozzles. Not one little bit.