Propellent Leak Ends SpaceX's Launch Record

Last night a Falcon 9 Launching Starlink Group 9-3 out of Vandenberg managed to get to the initial orbit, but failed before reaching the target orbit.
This is the first SpaceX launch failure in over 300 launches, a record that nobody else in the launch business can claim.

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[-slasht]

"As you have probably heard by now"
To be fair, space news reaches me by virtue of having the bell on on your channel exclusively these days.

[americankid]

So 1 failure in a little over 300 launches would be about a 0.34% failure rate.
That’s honestly pretty good for a giant science tube full of incredibly explosive materials.

[mgzuck]

I demand we reclassify all thrusters in terms of mouse farts

[PowerScissor]

Having this happen with their own payload is perfect.

There's an issue they get to fix without disappointing a customer.

[ArathirCz]

There is something mesmerizing in watching the ice hitting the exhaust plume and shooting away.

[bryanwilson]

The space gods have not smiled upon upper stages this month. Ariane 6? APU problems led to a failed relight. Hyperbola-1? Undisclosed problem led to the loss of fourth-stage. Falcon 9? Well, we all know…

[charleslord]

Every single early report I saw about this included a comment to the effect of "let's see what Scott Manley says" 😄
You da man!

[BagelmanSupreme]

I think it’s hilarious that the booster that’s flown potentially over a dozen times (not sure which booster it was), re-entered the atmosphere, and landed each time was perfectly fine, and it was the shiny and fresh upper stage that actually had issues

[JasonEdelman]

watching the physics of the 'ice chunks' interacting with the thrust is fascinating, thinking of the dynamic force of a mouse fart is just plain fun.

[vvac]

My hats off to the rocket scientist that determined the amount of propulsion from a mouse fart.

[CharlesReiche]

Tory Bruno has one accurate sniper rifle.

[danilooliveira]

the image of the ice crystals growing and hitting the exhaust gas is mesmerizing. at least those Space X failures are giving us amazing images that we would never be able to see otherwise.

[craigmcdermid]

I'm glad I checked out this info from Scott, so many other channels are suddenly spouting doom and gloom about spacex. This Chanel gives you some of the clearest info on the space industry and the technical information is spot on.

[donjones]

SpaceX will have to track down a manufacturing flaw in this particular upper stage. It's incredibly unlikely they'll find a design flaw that's been hiding all these years. Once they determine the flaw is limited to one item they can to back to normal. Was it one batch of bad bolts, etc?

[MrSaemichlaus]

Scott, you cannot reference a mouse's fart and then not bring up the numbers of it! There's little mice, big mice, starved mice, bloated mice, mice with dry farts, mice with mass ejection, ... and don't forget the nozzle parameters!

[anthonylawson]

Crazy shocked when this occurred. Also, everyone on yt and X was counting down for your vid, funny honestly

[mzmatze]

The comparison to the mouse fart made my day. :D

[tubularap]

6:01 - "Their thrust is weaker than a mouse-fart ... so ... yeah, that's not great."
Thanks Scott, we now have a new unit of thrust. How many mouse-farts is your thruster ? 😀

[MikkoRantalainen]

Explaining Starlink orbit manouver as "half a year long mouse fart" is both hilarious and surprisingly accurate.

[cloud]

I have a higher failure rate getting out of bed than this rocket does getting to space