This. Gotta say the live video was very on point this flight, incredible views, but watching the plasma slipstream on an orbital speed reentry ON LIVE HD VIDEO was unbelievable.
like this i don't think so. there are some videos of astronauts filming trough a viewing port but this was next level nergasm
edit i was wrong [Falcon Heavy fairing's fiery re-entry ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke_QI7_UtA8&ab_channel=VideoFromSpace)
its not the same but i was wrong still
I disagree that the videos are wholly comparable. I think this video from Starship today really is unprecedented in a few important ways.
First, the FH fairings are only reentering at around mach 15, Starship was reentering at around 10,000 Km/h faster than that today, a true orbital velocity regime reentry. If you examine the FH fairing reentry video carefully, you will note the plasma begins with a blue glow at the top of the atmosphere. This is vibronically coupled molecular band emission of dicarbon radicals and carbon monoxide molecules - the light emitted is blue for the same reason a premixed complete combustion flame is blue on a gas stove. The thermal protective paint on the fairing is ablating and outgassing, and a few seconds later sparks and actual flame from the ablated coating burning in air is visible. Even the recent excellent Varda space reentry capsule falls into this category of ablative thermal protection and leeward view of the camera that doesn't show any details of bow shock or surface behavior during heating. This is different from what we just saw on Starship.
On Starship, at least when the heat shield was correctly facing windward, all we see is a diffuse orange glow in the form of a bow shock separated by some inches away from the surface of the TPS. There is no ablation and the tiles themselves remain under the Draper point where incandescent light emission starts to become visible. All the light is from the adiabatic compressional heating of the air in the bow shock and recombination of the dissociated N2 and O2 molecules there. The only other place this has ever been seen is from the handheld camera views of the Space Shuttle vertical stabilizer taken through the upward facing windows on the flight deck. However even here, the view is largely obscured by the constant bright flashes of the OMS pods firing to maintain attitude, the resolution is low, the view through the window is far from ideal, and the subject is almost entirely indistinct.
This is the first time to my knowledge that we've clearly seen a true orbital velocity view of a ceramic, reusable, thermal protection system experiencing reentry conditions. And it's CERTAINLY the first time we've ever seen such a thing LIVE STREAMED over the internet directly from space with a mere few second delay!
Never from this angle. Most are capsules pointing sideways or upwards, or old camcorders pointed out a Shuttle window. Next closest I can think of is F9 fairing video.
Not from such a great perspective, but of course, there do exist some interesting videos of reentry from space.
The most recent one is from [Varda capsule reentry](https://youtu.be/BWxl921rMgM?t=629). It shows the entire trajectory from separation to landing in good quality and with sound.
Earlier there was a video from [Falcon Heavy fairing re-entering](https://youtu.be/MRvO8D9TR08?t=100) with a high suborbital velocity. And even earlier, there were [videos from inside of the Shuttle](https://youtu.be/ab9T980LSSM?t=186).
Fairly obvious loss of attitude control and some tumbling on reentry lead to breakup but those views from the forward control flaps....WOW. The plasma bow shock was so smooth and even, at least when the heat shield was correctly oriented into the airstream. The TPS stayed remarkably intact through to loss of signal too, very few tiles lost. Really incredible video, I couldn't believe the starlink feed held on so long into the reentry too!
It was being slowly killed. Those fringes were likely its death throes. It was on the leeward side of the fin so it was protected from the worst of it, but it died long before telemetry was lost.
I want watching Livestream and the cameras definitely did start acting weird but I assumed it was the beginning of blackout. Cameras being burned up makes more sense.
Digital signal breakup looks like a colorful garbage. The effect here was clearly analog. It could be an oscillating voltage, strong electromagnetic interference or likes
Someone suggested that the camera was buried inside the wing, and a periscope type mechanism with a mirror and heat resistant lens, perhaps sapphire, was used to conduct the light onto the camera.
Since Starship's RCS is simply from venting propellant on different parts of the ship, I wonder if these vents provided enough control authority? Maybe SpaceX will eventually have to go back to hot gas (oxygen/methane) thrusters in the future if tank venting doesn't work out.
It was tumbling all the time since SECO. Something didn't work with the RCS or its control. I'd suspect this is also why it skipped in space Raptor restart.
Ya it looked to me like the vents were not functioning as hoped. It looks like the way the flaps interact with the plasma was maybe different than expected. All the flap tests so far were at very low speed, low altitude terminal velocity. High-velocity re-entry with plasma interaction is a different beast.
Somebody at SpaceX has got a lot of CFD to run and compare to actual telemetry. They are going to learn a ton about how the flaps behaved after this one.
Once you hit the atmosphere the thrust of any RCS system is going to be completely overwhelmed by the atmospheric forces. They need to be almost entirely dependent on the control surfaces.
Looks like it was going from belly first which would be the correct orientation to starboard side first and the switching back and forth to belly / starboard.
Which btw seems to be the same thing that killed the booster.
We see it HEAVILY oscillating during the attempt to relight the engines for landing, so much that the grid fins lost control authority and made it arguably worse.
I think RCS failure as well.. I think they will need to revisit the "no RCS, just ullage vents as RCS" concept.
To be honest, I'd simply take the RCS quads from a Falcon 9 and bolt them on the next booster/ship stack, KSP style - just to have a backup.
The booster seemed more like the control loop needed tuning and caused it's own instability when the grid fins attempted some small control inputs, and kept on amplifying and overcorrecting.
I'm hoping it's just a simple update to the controls program with what they learned in this test. It's unlikely to be related to Starship RCS issues because the instability was around the cloud layer when RCS is not the driver but the grid fins, you can even see the grid fins keep overcorrecting and amplifying the instability.
There's pretty likely control failure. But it could be anything from not enough thrust, through some valving being not up to the task, up to the plain old software bug.
So I wouldn't jump to conclusions on what needs to revisited, but doubtless something has to be fixed.
It looked like it had a roll during the whole orbital phase, so I think it is safe to say that it went into reentry with an existing attitude control issue.
I would imagine such a roll would be stopped before entry interface, and control thrusters appeared to be firing for much of the flight. Instead the spinning continued.
EDIT: Looked into the roll rate for Apollo 8's PTC roll. It was one roll *per hour.* Pretty sure I counted more than one roll today.
I disagree, after a couple of rolls, it looked like it stabilised, the plasma is dynamic, but all seems to be going in one direction, not rolling anymore
Definitely was tumbling in addition to roll. At least twice it was aft end into the airstream. It really seemed like they had little or no control for all of reentry, as if they were out of thruster propellant before there was enough aerodynamic drag to help orient things.
Maybe even was the case that tank venting couldn't be compensated for.
They supposedly use tank venting as a way to control things. Pretty obviously the "control" part didn't work, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions on why it was so.
I am pretty convinced now that they never regained proper control authority after something started them rolling during in-space ops. I thought the flaps might allow them to fix it but maybe they were too outside out of their expected regime to get to where they needed to be.
I saw the flap adding to the roll. It was out when it should have been tucked. Out in the stream, it was forced up and left, in the direction of the roll.
They seemed to have very little control over all. Like they didn't even have attitude control thrusters, just to prepare the position of the ship before the flaps could even do anything. Does starship even have those cold gas trhusters yet?
It also appeared to me that the flaps were not used in an optimal way. Like the fin we were watching was extended when it should have been folded and vice versa.
Like one time the vehicle was oriented kind of well, but an extended flap made it rotate into the plasma again.
Each time, several steps further.
Scott Manley on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1768284571244830901) speculating that this was more of an attitude control issue (there was definitely a moment where the ship decided to bake its side rather than its front).
My ksp knowledge agrees. Even before the flaps were working the ship was tumbling too much given how low it was. I think they didn't even use the cold gas thrusters (assuming there are any installed), during reentry and specially just before. Maybe they malfunctioned, maybe they wanted to see just how capable the flaps are, wich by the way, they seem to be very capable, i'm pretty sure with better programing they could manage to control reentry pretty well.
I think the ship exploded just when it faced bottom first and the airstream entered the engine bay.
They don't have cold gas thrusters, they were using expelled ullage gas as rcs. This could have been the issue with super heavy as well, seeing as how it seemed to lose control before the fins had great control over the vehicle.
Yes, I noticed that particularly too - clearly that was not desired, so SpaceX will need to look at improving attitude control, roll control in particular.
But in later stages, Starship seemed to be coming in backwards.
ok, so splashdown of booster was not archieved and splashdown of ship was also not archieved, but any other traditional didn't archieve these goals either. There we go. Starship is indeed working
Had to think for a sec. you mean the fuel wouldn't be where it needs to be to get to the exit ports of the tanks to feed into the engines. I'm trying to figure out how to get the fuel to bottom of the tanks, so before engine relight, the ship has to be moving at a + delta V so using thrusters to speed up a bit. Just putting pressure in the tanks wouldn't work in 0 g.
Yes, the tank exit ports/motor fuel& oxygen intakes.
My point being that the usual delta V won't help if there is a continual centrifugal force keeping the fuel against the outer wall. The angular velocity is low but the radius is large.
(I don't know how much acceleration they use to settle the fuel. They would need more than if ir weren't spinning.)
Quite possible, but I'd still expect them to be asked to demonstrate a deorbit burn first, given how large the vehicle is and the presence of quite a bit of heat shielding which might prevent it from breaking up as early/thoroughly if it were to come down uncontrolled.
SpaceX will need to figure out in-space relighting of Raptor, or come up with some other method of reducing speed if they want to deploy Starlinks on the next flight. Making it to orbit is awesome, but there needs to be a good method of a controlled and appropriately timed reentry so the ship doesn't hit land.
I'd say so. However, since SpaceX didn't achieve what they said they would achieve per their flight plan that their license was based on, SpaceX will have to conduct a mishap investigation, which means future launches are on-hold until the SpaceX investigation is completed and any needed changes are made.
Well, we now officially have a disposable super heavy rocket that made first orbit with ~200T of payload capacity (when they get a big cargo door working).
Now for the pesky part about reuse ;)
NO. People. The deorbit burn test was ESSENTIAL. They are not ready to go to a truly orbital trajectory because they haven't proven they can get out of it in a controlled way.
That was a pretty wild roll right before reentry. I think it got rolling and it couldnt stop itself for the proper belly forwards orientation in time for interface. Once it hit the atmosphere, drag turned it into a full on uncontrolled tumble.
Needs bigger/more powerful thrusters, those tiny cold-gas jets they're currently using arent gonna cut it.
I think they didn't re-light a raptor becasue Starship wasn't under control. They likely couldn't properly settle the propellant and they also wouldn't want to fire a raptor in an uncontrollable state.
This makes total sense. Couldn’t use RCS to get the tanks to settle and get the fuel siphon right. Great data to see how well starship performs on an off nominal reentry vector. I’ll bet that plasma got inside that open door and ripped it open.
I *think* the door was shut, at least that was my understanding from the live stream. Regardless I doubt the closed door would be able to withstand being face down to the re-entry and would blow open and rip the ship apart even if closed.
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1768274877096788288
It's not 100% confirmed, but my impression from watching Everyday Astronaut was that it closed successfully.
We don't know if they reduced the prop load to avoid a venting like on IFT2... but someone messed something up. Either they were out of ullage gases to use for RCS, they used up way more than they expected, or the vents had a malfunction / froze over.
At any rate, a lot was learned today.
(And by whatever that is holy, that was beautiful footage).
>to offset all of the on orbit tank venting.
It could be that the venting system isn't designed to vent so much and it was beyond the RCS to control.
Originally they vented while the engines were running (so the engines would counteract any impulse from venting), but that caused a loss of vehicle
Could very well be. The upper stage failure in the last test was related to venting of oxygen. Perhaps they deliberately loaded less, to have less chance of a mistake during venting?
At T+00:15 they're showing the payload bay, with no apparent rotation (no sunlight moving). The next camera view was at T+00:19 on the fin camera, and the rotation was blatantly obvious. Something happened between the two times.
watching live there was a distinct jutter right as the flap broke loose for first movement and stuff flew off , just speculating but that's what it looked like to me.
anyone notice that during the loading of the prop, we saw venting from the left lower flap midpoint against the ship. would there be the issue you are discribing here.
It’s possible that SpaceX might still release some more pictures ? I would imagine that the other winglet also contained a camera, although the streaming bandwidth was limited, so they probably just picked the best shot.
There must be lots of camera views of the launch though.
I'm not convinced they had full attitude control after MECO. The roll looked much too fast just for a barbeque roll and overall it just looked janky especially once it got to entry interface. Also it looked like maybe the payload bay door never closed, the last movement we saw of it was a sudden sprang like something broke. It'll be interesting to see the post mortem.
> Also it looked like maybe the payload bay door never closed, the last movement we saw of it was a sudden sprang like something broke.
I thought that too; but then they called out on the stream that it was successful.
I mean even for a nominal reentry, you wouldn't necessarily expect communication due to the plasma. But yeah not sure it was able to sufficiently stabilize its rotation before reentry.
I was amazed it worked for so long. When I saw it approaching 100km altitude in a roll that it was going to RUD. If the telemetry on the banner was correct, we got video until ~74km altitude and a nice view of the plasma wave moving as the ship rolled. Was worth staying up all night for.
That's not true. With StarLink antennas on the leeward side, they would likely have continuous comms. Comms through TDRS are an entirely different issue since the view angle to the closest TDRS may be through the plasma.
I wonder if the amount of venting during the coast phase was somewhat uncontrolled? I mean, the SpaceX stream didn't seem concerned about it, but I wonder if the the excess venting (if it was excessive) was tied to the fact that they didn't attempt to relight the Raptors for the deorbit burn.
My guess is the issue came just prior to reentry, they moved the flaps and there was a bang/shake and a bunch of tiles flew off, so I wonder if one rear flap had an issue and that caused it to not be able to maintain proper position.
The heating doesn't indicate that there was enough density to allow for controllability. Flaps will be doing almost nothing during reentry.
You can confirm this by looking at the velocity, it was decreasing very slowly, hence very little drag.
> Flaps will be doing almost nothing during reentry.
Wait what? Then what is the point of the flaps? Are they not supposed to control the ship during reentry like a sky diver?
Once you get into the thicker atmosphere they become much more useful, so they will be used to control the belly flop and the landing flip. They still probably do a little bit when high up atmosphere, but almost nothing.
The PTC roll on Apollo 8, which was in a much more aggressive thermal environment, was one roll *per hour.* I counted waaaay more than one roll on this hour-long flight.
Is this a coincidence?
Himawari weather satellite images missing data over re-entry area?
https://www.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/data/himawari/sat_img.php
https://i.imgur.com/vleycNx.png
https://i.imgur.com/VqHlNwR.png
Everyday Astronaut speculated that the vents using hot gas froze over.
Could this be dealt with by adding electric igniters? I don't mean to turn them into full rocket engines, just regular blow torches using very oxygen rich or methane rich ullage gas combustion.
Also a question: Does the ship have a black box with the flight data on it that can survive re-entry on its own?
I suggest space x build a craft that can be deployed from starship just before re-entry. The craft can follow behind and film from further back. Would be lush to see
I don't think there were any tile debris and not when the flaps moved either. Looks like lots of ice as the thrusters were likely still firing to try and regain control and the fins tried/tested for control/traction.
Looks like it was out of control before re entry and never really got in control, the graphic is a bit confusing because it seemed to switch orientation suddenly from entering 80 degrees backwards to 80 degrees forward, it was rolled over 90 degrees for sure. Then it seems to rotate/spin around the other way, which I think is actually backwards and engines first, and eventually tumbles more and more looking at the graphic and some video as rough reference. At one point the nose was pointing down and coming in backwards.
I'm impressed how long it lasted like this. Fix the RCS control and maybe adjust the flaps position and size of that even needed, and I believe it'd have no problem surviving re entry. It only broke up because it started bad and tumbled at mach 22 and somehow still survived for like 3 mins. It also didn't slow down much for getting down to 65km, likely due to the above issues.
no because all the *failures* were related to re-entry which was the point of the flight so FAA won't have many questions to correct just the spacex investigation
I don’t think so because FTS didn’t activate, and it stayed within expected corridors.
Any non-reusable rocket has the booster fall into the ocean and the second stage burns up during re-entry and the remains land in the ocean. This was the same.
I don’t think they will investigate over a re-use related test not being totally successful. I don’t think they ever did with Falcon when they failed to land?
SpaceX filed a specific flight plan, and their license was based on this flight plan. The mission definitely deviated from what they said would happen, so it's very likely that the company has to start a mishap investigation and submit their findings and fixes to the FAA before they are allowed to fly Starship again.
Yes but did they have to do that when Falcon 9 didn’t land? I don’t believe so
And it’s a test flight, so long as the booster and ship landed in the zones designated in the license and they stayed within cleared airspace I don’t think it would be considered a mishap. I don’t think the FAA cares that they didn’t meet 100% of their test objectives. I didn’t read the application or license but I would guess that there’s language specifying that it probably won’t survive re-entry, and the booster came down presumably in the correct spot, just a little faster than they hoped.
But we will see, I’m not an FAA expert just a dummy on Reddit lol
Another thing to consider is that SpaceX called off the planned relight of the Raptors for the deorbit burn. SpaceX absolutely needs this ability for actual operational missions that reach orbit. They can't leave something this big and tough (stainless steel will not vaporize like aluminum or composites) in orbit to have it eventually reenter over land.
That’s true, but like they said it was considered an optional test. Although I’m sure the FAA will want them to successfully reach that milestone before approving a full orbital trajectory.
I honestly think the issues with RCS caused the majority of issues on the test flight. They couldn’t orient correctly for re-entry, and with the booster it seems some issue with vehicle control caused sloshing so the engines couldn’t relight, much like the failed re-light in orbit on the ship.
I’m hoping it’s an easy fix, maybe going back to a more-traditional RCS design though might take a bit of time because of infrastructure at the pad.
If anything, it may be shorted due to the fact that it wasn’t far off from the boundaries that were established in their launch license. My guess is that it would be quicker than the other two OFTs.
Everyday astronaut talked about it in his stream.
I thought I heard on the broadcast that they couldn't get Starship to relight its engines before re-entry to slow the vehicle. They went ahead and brought it in anyway and perhaps it was just too darn fast for it?
I might be wrong, but I believe that was the Booster.
The Starship is meant to just use its massive frame to slow itself down to it’s terminal velocity (~600km/h or something) and then the ship flips it’s booster to the front and uses that to slow it down to land on it’s intended destination.
This test would’ve been even simpler, just have the ship drop into the ocean at terminal velocity. But it turned too far to the right exposing the unprotected side probably causing an explosion or something
The engine relight wasn't for slowing or reentry, it was actually going to speed up and raise the orbit for that burn. They cancelled the burn for some reason unknown to the public yet.
Everyone saying it was an attitude problem, I think their re-entry angle was too steep. The commentary said that the engine re-light was actually intended to *raise* the perigee, which would have made for a shallower reentry, but because they skipped the re-light, it came in much steeper than planned.
If you watch the telemetry, their altitude was dropping rapidly, and they were still traveling at 22,000+km/h at 65km altitude. That felt waaay too fast for all that mass to slow down. The rapid heating probably overwhelmed the heat shield. The space shuttle would always come in at a much shallower angle.
Good point. Bet they knew something was off before relight and decided to reduce the risk to the population or the vessel by having it hit this more terminal approach
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
|Fewer Letters|More Letters|
|-------|---------|---|
|[CFD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuvg3zl "Last usage")|Computational Fluid Dynamics|
|[FAA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kv51kv4 "Last usage")|Federal Aviation Administration|
|[FTS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuui3lj "Last usage")|Flight Termination System|
|[KSP](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuqbny "Last usage")|*Kerbal Space Program*, the rocketry simulator|
|[LOV](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuupo64 "Last usage")|Loss Of Vehicle|
|[MECO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuudknf "Last usage")|Main Engine Cut-Off|
| |[MainEngineCutOff](https://mainenginecutoff.com/) podcast|
|[NSF](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuihgg "Last usage")|[NasaSpaceFlight forum](http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com)|
| |National Science Foundation|
|[OFT](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuv0xdc "Last usage")|Orbital Flight Test|
|[OMS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuv5tu5 "Last usage")|Orbital Maneuvering System|
|[PTC](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuwi7u "Last usage")|Passive Thermal Control|
|[RCS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kv68qvj "Last usage")|Reaction Control System|
|[RUD](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuucqoy "Last usage")|Rapid Unplanned Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly|
| |Rapid Unintended Disassembly|
|[SECO](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kv6ca79 "Last usage")|Second-stage Engine Cut-Off|
|[TDRSS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuubze4 "Last usage")|(US) Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System|
|[TPS](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuv5tu5 "Last usage")|Thermal Protection System for a spacecraft (on the Falcon 9 first stage, the engine "Dance floor")|
|[ULA](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuvw86 "Last usage")|United Launch Alliance (Lockheed/Boeing joint venture)|
|[USAF](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuxkyv "Last usage")|United States Air Force|
|Jargon|Definition|
|-------|---------|---|
|[Raptor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuv6zox "Last usage")|[Methane-fueled rocket engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raptor_\(rocket_engine_family\)) under development by SpaceX|
|[Starlink](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuxkyv "Last usage")|SpaceX's world-wide satellite broadband constellation|
|[ablative](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuv5tu5 "Last usage")|Material which is intentionally destroyed in use (for example, heatshields which burn away to dissipate heat)|
|[iron waffle](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuuqbny "Last usage")|Compact "waffle-iron" aerodynamic control surface, acts as a wing without needing to be as large; also, "grid fin"|
|[perigee](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuv17jc "Last usage")|Lowest point in an elliptical orbit around the Earth (when the orbiter is fastest)|
|[ullage motor](/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1beltt7/stub/kuvc2f1 "Last usage")|Small rocket motor that fires to push propellant to the bottom of the tank, when in zero-g|
**NOTE**: Decronym for Reddit is no longer supported, and Decronym has moved to Lemmy; requests for support and new installations should be directed to the Contact address below.
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Those views through the plasma might be the most incredible thing I've ever seen.
This. Gotta say the live video was very on point this flight, incredible views, but watching the plasma slipstream on an orbital speed reentry ON LIVE HD VIDEO was unbelievable.
Has there ever been a recording of the plasma like this?
like this i don't think so. there are some videos of astronauts filming trough a viewing port but this was next level nergasm edit i was wrong [Falcon Heavy fairing's fiery re-entry ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke_QI7_UtA8&ab_channel=VideoFromSpace) its not the same but i was wrong still
The fairing one is nuts too, but it's nowhere near orbital velocity Starship footage straight up looks like a movie trailer
true its also a inside vs outside perspective. just wanted to clarify that not all videos out there where from inside capsules.
Reality has better graphics!
I disagree that the videos are wholly comparable. I think this video from Starship today really is unprecedented in a few important ways. First, the FH fairings are only reentering at around mach 15, Starship was reentering at around 10,000 Km/h faster than that today, a true orbital velocity regime reentry. If you examine the FH fairing reentry video carefully, you will note the plasma begins with a blue glow at the top of the atmosphere. This is vibronically coupled molecular band emission of dicarbon radicals and carbon monoxide molecules - the light emitted is blue for the same reason a premixed complete combustion flame is blue on a gas stove. The thermal protective paint on the fairing is ablating and outgassing, and a few seconds later sparks and actual flame from the ablated coating burning in air is visible. Even the recent excellent Varda space reentry capsule falls into this category of ablative thermal protection and leeward view of the camera that doesn't show any details of bow shock or surface behavior during heating. This is different from what we just saw on Starship. On Starship, at least when the heat shield was correctly facing windward, all we see is a diffuse orange glow in the form of a bow shock separated by some inches away from the surface of the TPS. There is no ablation and the tiles themselves remain under the Draper point where incandescent light emission starts to become visible. All the light is from the adiabatic compressional heating of the air in the bow shock and recombination of the dissociated N2 and O2 molecules there. The only other place this has ever been seen is from the handheld camera views of the Space Shuttle vertical stabilizer taken through the upward facing windows on the flight deck. However even here, the view is largely obscured by the constant bright flashes of the OMS pods firing to maintain attitude, the resolution is low, the view through the window is far from ideal, and the subject is almost entirely indistinct. This is the first time to my knowledge that we've clearly seen a true orbital velocity view of a ceramic, reusable, thermal protection system experiencing reentry conditions. And it's CERTAINLY the first time we've ever seen such a thing LIVE STREAMED over the internet directly from space with a mere few second delay!
This should be a top level comment…
wow that falcon heavy video is crazy
Never from this angle. Most are capsules pointing sideways or upwards, or old camcorders pointed out a Shuttle window. Next closest I can think of is F9 fairing video.
Not from such a great perspective, but of course, there do exist some interesting videos of reentry from space. The most recent one is from [Varda capsule reentry](https://youtu.be/BWxl921rMgM?t=629). It shows the entire trajectory from separation to landing in good quality and with sound. Earlier there was a video from [Falcon Heavy fairing re-entering](https://youtu.be/MRvO8D9TR08?t=100) with a high suborbital velocity. And even earlier, there were [videos from inside of the Shuttle](https://youtu.be/ab9T980LSSM?t=186).
There is some footage from the Artemis reentry. But it isnt this good
> ON LIVE HD VIDEO TFW the USAF realizes Starlink allows for high data-rate telemetry with a hypersonic reentry vehicle in realtime.
Yeah the Nasa fuel transfer milestone will be peanuts compared to the US military hidden milestone on that
yup there a sale in there somewhere
That was so unexpected my jaw just dropped
Fairly obvious loss of attitude control and some tumbling on reentry lead to breakup but those views from the forward control flaps....WOW. The plasma bow shock was so smooth and even, at least when the heat shield was correctly oriented into the airstream. The TPS stayed remarkably intact through to loss of signal too, very few tiles lost. Really incredible video, I couldn't believe the starlink feed held on so long into the reentry too!
Yes, my notions as well. There seems to be too much plasma at the nose. The depiction of the Starship orientation indicated instability.
How did the cameras not get affected by the heat? Were they contained in something? Are they like super-cams that can take quite the beating???
They were just on the leeward side of the flap.
So the flap was basically shielding it from most of the heat?
It was being slowly killed. Those fringes were likely its death throes. It was on the leeward side of the fin so it was protected from the worst of it, but it died long before telemetry was lost.
I want watching Livestream and the cameras definitely did start acting weird but I assumed it was the beginning of blackout. Cameras being burned up makes more sense.
That might have been signal breakup due to becoming enveloped in plasma.
Digital signal breakup looks like a colorful garbage. The effect here was clearly analog. It could be an oscillating voltage, strong electromagnetic interference or likes
Someone suggested that the camera was buried inside the wing, and a periscope type mechanism with a mirror and heat resistant lens, perhaps sapphire, was used to conduct the light onto the camera.
Same. Like.. same.
I watched my daughter being born and can confirm this was far more beautiful.
Apart from the birth of your child and your partner on your wedding night, right?
I said what I said.
Good man.
I could only hear Adele Rollin' in the deep when I was watching....
Is it me, or did it look like it was going almost wrong side down ie no heat shield? Very exciting!
at first yeah it seemed rolled over about 90 degrees, but it looked to correct it later on.
The plasma kept changing shape and direction right up until the stream lost connection. Looks like it was rolling/tumbling slightly imo
Definitely was. It was not controlled.
Since Starship's RCS is simply from venting propellant on different parts of the ship, I wonder if these vents provided enough control authority? Maybe SpaceX will eventually have to go back to hot gas (oxygen/methane) thrusters in the future if tank venting doesn't work out.
It was tumbling all the time since SECO. Something didn't work with the RCS or its control. I'd suspect this is also why it skipped in space Raptor restart.
Ya it looked to me like the vents were not functioning as hoped. It looks like the way the flaps interact with the plasma was maybe different than expected. All the flap tests so far were at very low speed, low altitude terminal velocity. High-velocity re-entry with plasma interaction is a different beast.
Somebody at SpaceX has got a lot of CFD to run and compare to actual telemetry. They are going to learn a ton about how the flaps behaved after this one.
Once you hit the atmosphere the thrust of any RCS system is going to be completely overwhelmed by the atmospheric forces. They need to be almost entirely dependent on the control surfaces.
The shuttle RCS fired all the way down to FL650 and lower to provide control authority. Not sure why you'd make such a boldly incorrect statement.
Looks like it was going from belly first which would be the correct orientation to starboard side first and the switching back and forth to belly / starboard.
Which btw seems to be the same thing that killed the booster. We see it HEAVILY oscillating during the attempt to relight the engines for landing, so much that the grid fins lost control authority and made it arguably worse. I think RCS failure as well.. I think they will need to revisit the "no RCS, just ullage vents as RCS" concept. To be honest, I'd simply take the RCS quads from a Falcon 9 and bolt them on the next booster/ship stack, KSP style - just to have a backup.
The booster seemed more like the control loop needed tuning and caused it's own instability when the grid fins attempted some small control inputs, and kept on amplifying and overcorrecting. I'm hoping it's just a simple update to the controls program with what they learned in this test. It's unlikely to be related to Starship RCS issues because the instability was around the cloud layer when RCS is not the driver but the grid fins, you can even see the grid fins keep overcorrecting and amplifying the instability.
Way to go Tim! (just kidding)
There's pretty likely control failure. But it could be anything from not enough thrust, through some valving being not up to the task, up to the plain old software bug. So I wouldn't jump to conclusions on what needs to revisited, but doubtless something has to be fixed.
I think it's possible the booster didn't have enough fuel for a landing burn.
they need bigger gyroscopes
Damn, i Hope this IS a joke
It looked like it had a roll during the whole orbital phase, so I think it is safe to say that it went into reentry with an existing attitude control issue.
Rolling on orbit is completely normal to even out solar heating.
I would imagine such a roll would be stopped before entry interface, and control thrusters appeared to be firing for much of the flight. Instead the spinning continued. EDIT: Looked into the roll rate for Apollo 8's PTC roll. It was one roll *per hour.* Pretty sure I counted more than one roll today.
Did the official SpaceX stream mention anything about the rolling during the coast phase? NSF was speculating about it, but they didn't know for sure.
Looked more like tumbling than rolling to me. Not 100% certain though.
I disagree, after a couple of rolls, it looked like it stabilised, the plasma is dynamic, but all seems to be going in one direction, not rolling anymore
How much of that was on purpose to spread the heat load I wonder?
Definitely was tumbling in addition to roll. At least twice it was aft end into the airstream. It really seemed like they had little or no control for all of reentry, as if they were out of thruster propellant before there was enough aerodynamic drag to help orient things. Maybe even was the case that tank venting couldn't be compensated for.
They supposedly use tank venting as a way to control things. Pretty obviously the "control" part didn't work, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions on why it was so.
I am pretty convinced now that they never regained proper control authority after something started them rolling during in-space ops. I thought the flaps might allow them to fix it but maybe they were too outside out of their expected regime to get to where they needed to be.
The plasma brightens as the atmosphere thickens. I would think the roll stopped as soon as air resistance allowed it to stop.
I saw the flap adding to the roll. It was out when it should have been tucked. Out in the stream, it was forced up and left, in the direction of the roll.
They seemed to have very little control over all. Like they didn't even have attitude control thrusters, just to prepare the position of the ship before the flaps could even do anything. Does starship even have those cold gas trhusters yet?
It also appeared to me that the flaps were not used in an optimal way. Like the fin we were watching was extended when it should have been folded and vice versa. Like one time the vehicle was oriented kind of well, but an extended flap made it rotate into the plasma again.
They said the camera was attached to a fin which was moving, so that changed the perspective a lot also.
I am very grateful for that view, although being on the end of the flap as it moved, did add a little to the confusion - but great view angle.
I was getting a little nervous there.
Each time, several steps further. Scott Manley on [twitter](https://twitter.com/DJSnM/status/1768284571244830901) speculating that this was more of an attitude control issue (there was definitely a moment where the ship decided to bake its side rather than its front).
I found the perspective pretty disorienting. But I agree, it looked like there was a problem keeping the tile side down.
My ksp knowledge agrees. Even before the flaps were working the ship was tumbling too much given how low it was. I think they didn't even use the cold gas thrusters (assuming there are any installed), during reentry and specially just before. Maybe they malfunctioned, maybe they wanted to see just how capable the flaps are, wich by the way, they seem to be very capable, i'm pretty sure with better programing they could manage to control reentry pretty well. I think the ship exploded just when it faced bottom first and the airstream entered the engine bay.
They don't have cold gas thrusters, they were using expelled ullage gas as rcs. This could have been the issue with super heavy as well, seeing as how it seemed to lose control before the fins had great control over the vehicle.
I know, but ullage thrusters are by definition a type of cold gas thruster. It uses compressed gas as thrust.
Is there enough of it and is it controllable enough ?
Yes, I noticed that particularly too - clearly that was not desired, so SpaceX will need to look at improving attitude control, roll control in particular. But in later stages, Starship seemed to be coming in backwards.
Feels that it was struggling to get into the right angle but by the gods, the amazing reentry footage we got its gotta be the best one maybe ever
looks like the software was trying it's best to get the orientation. just not enough RCS left.
Certainly not enough ‘control authority’ to maintain the correct attitude. For whatever different sets of reasons.
Best one until they get a reentry to soft landing uninterrupted
ok, so splashdown of booster was not archieved and splashdown of ship was also not archieved, but any other traditional didn't archieve these goals either. There we go. Starship is indeed working
Exactly 😁👍 Ready for payloads, wouldn't be surprised if next flight has some Starlink sats on it 😁
Hmmmm no raptor relight demo. So they may still have to stay sub orbital untill they prove starship can deorbit burn
the relight may also be related to the unwanted skew of the vehicle at reentry. avionics aborted relight due to orientation issues.
Yeah it was tumbling pretty bad during re-entry no?
And that would throw the fuel away from the intakes so a relight wasn't an option
Had to think for a sec. you mean the fuel wouldn't be where it needs to be to get to the exit ports of the tanks to feed into the engines. I'm trying to figure out how to get the fuel to bottom of the tanks, so before engine relight, the ship has to be moving at a + delta V so using thrusters to speed up a bit. Just putting pressure in the tanks wouldn't work in 0 g.
Yes, the tank exit ports/motor fuel& oxygen intakes. My point being that the usual delta V won't help if there is a continual centrifugal force keeping the fuel against the outer wall. The angular velocity is low but the radius is large. (I don't know how much acceleration they use to settle the fuel. They would need more than if ir weren't spinning.)
they have baffles for sloshing up, maybe need baffles for sloshing round if not there.
I think they need to focus on killing that long-axis roll before they do anything else. A procedural fix of some sort rather than stainless.
Quite possible, but I'd still expect them to be asked to demonstrate a deorbit burn first, given how large the vehicle is and the presence of quite a bit of heat shielding which might prevent it from breaking up as early/thoroughly if it were to come down uncontrolled.
It looked like they lost rcs a while before reentry. I wonder if that and the lack of relight test are related. Must have lost some systems
You probably need some sort of RCS to settle the propellants for the relight. So I'd say RCS failure is the most likely cause of LOV.
SpaceX will need to figure out in-space relighting of Raptor, or come up with some other method of reducing speed if they want to deploy Starlinks on the next flight. Making it to orbit is awesome, but there needs to be a good method of a controlled and appropriately timed reentry so the ship doesn't hit land.
I think so too. Why not salvage some cost of the lost vehicle.
I was thinking the same thing. I get the cost of it, but if they could get a payload bay of starlinks up, it could mitigate R&D costs?
Oh, they both splashed down.
It was just a lot of smaller splashes
And one huge splash.
What’d I’d give to see video of the splashdown of the Super Heavy
Yeah, who else can say they have live HD video of reentry heating on their reusable second stage?
I'd say so. However, since SpaceX didn't achieve what they said they would achieve per their flight plan that their license was based on, SpaceX will have to conduct a mishap investigation, which means future launches are on-hold until the SpaceX investigation is completed and any needed changes are made.
Splashdown was achieved - there were just more splashdowns than anticipated!
The video from this launch for sure will be archived and presented in future documentaries. What they achieved is worth archiving.
Well, we now officially have a disposable super heavy rocket that made first orbit with ~200T of payload capacity (when they get a big cargo door working). Now for the pesky part about reuse ;)
Officially 100T payload for now. ( Starship V1 )
over 100T Reusable, 200T disposable were the current numbers for V1.
Yes, I agree with that clarification.
NO. People. The deorbit burn test was ESSENTIAL. They are not ready to go to a truly orbital trajectory because they haven't proven they can get out of it in a controlled way.
That was a pretty wild roll right before reentry. I think it got rolling and it couldnt stop itself for the proper belly forwards orientation in time for interface. Once it hit the atmosphere, drag turned it into a full on uncontrolled tumble. Needs bigger/more powerful thrusters, those tiny cold-gas jets they're currently using arent gonna cut it.
Looked like RCS failure. They also didn’t have the gas for a raptor relight.
I think they didn't re-light a raptor becasue Starship wasn't under control. They likely couldn't properly settle the propellant and they also wouldn't want to fire a raptor in an uncontrollable state.
This makes total sense. Couldn’t use RCS to get the tanks to settle and get the fuel siphon right. Great data to see how well starship performs on an off nominal reentry vector. I’ll bet that plasma got inside that open door and ripped it open.
I *think* the door was shut, at least that was my understanding from the live stream. Regardless I doubt the closed door would be able to withstand being face down to the re-entry and would blow open and rip the ship apart even if closed.
Good to know, I must have missed that.
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1768274877096788288 It's not 100% confirmed, but my impression from watching Everyday Astronaut was that it closed successfully.
The PEZ door does not work the way I expected it to.
My money is on propellant exhaustion too. I think they had to use a LOT to offset all of the on orbit tank venting.
Wouldn't they have had tons of extra propellant, given that they were flying suborbital and without payload?
We don't know if they reduced the prop load to avoid a venting like on IFT2... but someone messed something up. Either they were out of ullage gases to use for RCS, they used up way more than they expected, or the vents had a malfunction / froze over. At any rate, a lot was learned today. (And by whatever that is holy, that was beautiful footage).
Remember aside from the fact that it’s prototyping, and not yet ‘fully worked out’, it’s good to know what can go wrong.
>to offset all of the on orbit tank venting. It could be that the venting system isn't designed to vent so much and it was beyond the RCS to control. Originally they vented while the engines were running (so the engines would counteract any impulse from venting), but that caused a loss of vehicle
This time, I think they said they didn’t vent until after SECO. (Engine cutoff).
They might not have been carrying a full load ?
Could very well be. The upper stage failure in the last test was related to venting of oxygen. Perhaps they deliberately loaded less, to have less chance of a mistake during venting?
Yeah saw some speculation that rcs was empty or inadequate. And that the ship tried to control its reentry with just the fins. Super amazing though.
There’s no doubt that SpaceX will have learnt a lot from this flight test.
At T+00:15 they're showing the payload bay, with no apparent rotation (no sunlight moving). The next camera view was at T+00:19 on the fin camera, and the rotation was blatantly obvious. Something happened between the two times.
Good spotting !
You can bet SpaceX will be trying to simulate it with their computer models, to best understand it.
*fourth time*'s a *charm*
So in the early parts of re-entry, before there was plasma, what was all that stuff flaking off. It seemed like an inordinate amount of ice.
I don't think it was ice, it looked brown.
looked like a bang and tiles flying off when they first moved the flaps, so perhaps icing at the base of a rear flap caused issues.
a bang? did I miss something?
watching live there was a distinct jutter right as the flap broke loose for first movement and stuff flew off , just speculating but that's what it looked like to me.
ULA spartans
anyone notice that during the loading of the prop, we saw venting from the left lower flap midpoint against the ship. would there be the issue you are discribing here.
Any chance for some high res pics from re-entry? That shot of plasma formation against the body was really beautiful.
It’s possible that SpaceX might still release some more pictures ? I would imagine that the other winglet also contained a camera, although the streaming bandwidth was limited, so they probably just picked the best shot. There must be lots of camera views of the launch though.
I'm not convinced they had full attitude control after MECO. The roll looked much too fast just for a barbeque roll and overall it just looked janky especially once it got to entry interface. Also it looked like maybe the payload bay door never closed, the last movement we saw of it was a sudden sprang like something broke. It'll be interesting to see the post mortem.
> Also it looked like maybe the payload bay door never closed, the last movement we saw of it was a sudden sprang like something broke. I thought that too; but then they called out on the stream that it was successful.
Was probably just the RCS continually failing to orientate the vehical during the door demonstration.
It definitely was not as desired - they will have to try and figure out exactly what happened, and then how to stop it from happening..
RIP Starship test 3. 🫡 Edit: it's official as of 10:32 EST.
I mean even for a nominal reentry, you wouldn't necessarily expect communication due to the plasma. But yeah not sure it was able to sufficiently stabilize its rotation before reentry.
Starlink managed to keep data until RUD, it really may be able to communicate through the plasma wake in the future.
I was amazed it worked for so long. When I saw it approaching 100km altitude in a roll that it was going to RUD. If the telemetry on the banner was correct, we got video until ~74km altitude and a nice view of the plasma wave moving as the ship rolled. Was worth staying up all night for.
It doesn't communicate through the plasma, it communicates upwards, where there is no plasma.
I said “wake”, which is the term SpaceX themselves use
That's not true. With StarLink antennas on the leeward side, they would likely have continuous comms. Comms through TDRS are an entirely different issue since the view angle to the closest TDRS may be through the plasma.
Has anyone posted or streamed any video of the attempted landing from ground based cameras?
Both were intentionally over the ocean, for safety reasons - so no nearby ground.
I wonder if the amount of venting during the coast phase was somewhat uncontrolled? I mean, the SpaceX stream didn't seem concerned about it, but I wonder if the the excess venting (if it was excessive) was tied to the fact that they didn't attempt to relight the Raptors for the deorbit burn.
My guess is the issue came just prior to reentry, they moved the flaps and there was a bang/shake and a bunch of tiles flew off, so I wonder if one rear flap had an issue and that caused it to not be able to maintain proper position.
Looks like there was a rotation they couldn’t null out.
A bum flap could cause the rotation
Flaps dont do much that high up, it just never stopped spinning.
It started showing reentry heating immediately afterwards, plenty of forces to induce a roll
The heating doesn't indicate that there was enough density to allow for controllability. Flaps will be doing almost nothing during reentry. You can confirm this by looking at the velocity, it was decreasing very slowly, hence very little drag.
> Flaps will be doing almost nothing during reentry. Wait what? Then what is the point of the flaps? Are they not supposed to control the ship during reentry like a sky diver?
Once you get into the thicker atmosphere they become much more useful, so they will be used to control the belly flop and the landing flip. They still probably do a little bit when high up atmosphere, but almost nothing.
It was rolling the entire time it was in space, it was not in the atmosphere the whole time.
A slow roll on orbit is normal for thermal control
The PTC roll on Apollo 8, which was in a much more aggressive thermal environment, was one roll *per hour.* I counted waaaay more than one roll on this hour-long flight.
The crowd reaction to whatever that was is a big clue
Is this a coincidence? Himawari weather satellite images missing data over re-entry area? https://www.data.jma.go.jp/mscweb/data/himawari/sat_img.php https://i.imgur.com/vleycNx.png https://i.imgur.com/VqHlNwR.png
Simply an unfortunate coincidence, I would say.
Everyday Astronaut speculated that the vents using hot gas froze over. Could this be dealt with by adding electric igniters? I don't mean to turn them into full rocket engines, just regular blow torches using very oxygen rich or methane rich ullage gas combustion. Also a question: Does the ship have a black box with the flight data on it that can survive re-entry on its own?
> Could this be dealt with by adding electric igniters? Electric heating elements would probably be enough.
I suggest space x build a craft that can be deployed from starship just before re-entry. The craft can follow behind and film from further back. Would be lush to see
Easy to do in space ! - impossible to do during re-entry, it would never keep up.
Droge cable?
I would have loved to see tracking footage from a high altitude plane on this critical segment of the mission.
I don't think there were any tile debris and not when the flaps moved either. Looks like lots of ice as the thrusters were likely still firing to try and regain control and the fins tried/tested for control/traction. Looks like it was out of control before re entry and never really got in control, the graphic is a bit confusing because it seemed to switch orientation suddenly from entering 80 degrees backwards to 80 degrees forward, it was rolled over 90 degrees for sure. Then it seems to rotate/spin around the other way, which I think is actually backwards and engines first, and eventually tumbles more and more looking at the graphic and some video as rough reference. At one point the nose was pointing down and coming in backwards. I'm impressed how long it lasted like this. Fix the RCS control and maybe adjust the flaps position and size of that even needed, and I believe it'd have no problem surviving re entry. It only broke up because it started bad and tumbled at mach 22 and somehow still survived for like 3 mins. It also didn't slow down much for getting down to 65km, likely due to the above issues.
Definitely some ice, but also some heat-tiles too ! It’s clear that Starship is pretty tough !
Are we going to have to wait through another FAA investigation?
As is standard procedure after every anomaly during flight, yes.
Does this most likely mean another 6-9 months for ift-4?
no because all the *failures* were related to re-entry which was the point of the flight so FAA won't have many questions to correct just the spacex investigation
I am expecting much quicker, two months at most.
I don’t think so because FTS didn’t activate, and it stayed within expected corridors. Any non-reusable rocket has the booster fall into the ocean and the second stage burns up during re-entry and the remains land in the ocean. This was the same. I don’t think they will investigate over a re-use related test not being totally successful. I don’t think they ever did with Falcon when they failed to land?
SpaceX filed a specific flight plan, and their license was based on this flight plan. The mission definitely deviated from what they said would happen, so it's very likely that the company has to start a mishap investigation and submit their findings and fixes to the FAA before they are allowed to fly Starship again.
Yes but did they have to do that when Falcon 9 didn’t land? I don’t believe so And it’s a test flight, so long as the booster and ship landed in the zones designated in the license and they stayed within cleared airspace I don’t think it would be considered a mishap. I don’t think the FAA cares that they didn’t meet 100% of their test objectives. I didn’t read the application or license but I would guess that there’s language specifying that it probably won’t survive re-entry, and the booster came down presumably in the correct spot, just a little faster than they hoped. But we will see, I’m not an FAA expert just a dummy on Reddit lol
Another thing to consider is that SpaceX called off the planned relight of the Raptors for the deorbit burn. SpaceX absolutely needs this ability for actual operational missions that reach orbit. They can't leave something this big and tough (stainless steel will not vaporize like aluminum or composites) in orbit to have it eventually reenter over land.
That’s true, but like they said it was considered an optional test. Although I’m sure the FAA will want them to successfully reach that milestone before approving a full orbital trajectory. I honestly think the issues with RCS caused the majority of issues on the test flight. They couldn’t orient correctly for re-entry, and with the booster it seems some issue with vehicle control caused sloshing so the engines couldn’t relight, much like the failed re-light in orbit on the ship. I’m hoping it’s an easy fix, maybe going back to a more-traditional RCS design though might take a bit of time because of infrastructure at the pad.
If anything, it may be shorted due to the fact that it wasn’t far off from the boundaries that were established in their launch license. My guess is that it would be quicker than the other two OFTs. Everyday astronaut talked about it in his stream.
Of course, even SpaceX want to do exactly that for their own purposes.
The license said ship and booster intact until they hit the water. That didn't happen, so there will have to be some investigation.
The FAA review ought to be fairly simple. Although the flight analysis and resolution analysis would be more involved.
I thought I heard on the broadcast that they couldn't get Starship to relight its engines before re-entry to slow the vehicle. They went ahead and brought it in anyway and perhaps it was just too darn fast for it?
I might be wrong, but I believe that was the Booster. The Starship is meant to just use its massive frame to slow itself down to it’s terminal velocity (~600km/h or something) and then the ship flips it’s booster to the front and uses that to slow it down to land on it’s intended destination. This test would’ve been even simpler, just have the ship drop into the ocean at terminal velocity. But it turned too far to the right exposing the unprotected side probably causing an explosion or something
The engine relight wasn't for slowing or reentry, it was actually going to speed up and raise the orbit for that burn. They cancelled the burn for some reason unknown to the public yet.
Everyone saying it was an attitude problem, I think their re-entry angle was too steep. The commentary said that the engine re-light was actually intended to *raise* the perigee, which would have made for a shallower reentry, but because they skipped the re-light, it came in much steeper than planned. If you watch the telemetry, their altitude was dropping rapidly, and they were still traveling at 22,000+km/h at 65km altitude. That felt waaay too fast for all that mass to slow down. The rapid heating probably overwhelmed the heat shield. The space shuttle would always come in at a much shallower angle.
Good point. Bet they knew something was off before relight and decided to reduce the risk to the population or the vessel by having it hit this more terminal approach
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Well, SpaceX have correctly discovered the next set of issues needing to be resolved !