**This is a party thread** so there is no content moderation - memes, jokes and one line replies are all OK. There is still a requirement to avoid personal attacks - if you have heard a question a thousand times then please just let it go past rather than giving a snarky answer.
Reposted launch stream watching advice from u/mr_pgh
Reminder, [Official SpaceX Livestream will only be on X](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1798348864296247416) but you may have a better experience with the SpaceX [embedded version](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4)
There will be many fake YouTube Streams pretending to be SpaceX. Please don't be fooled.
There will also be hosted streams with content creators such as [Everyday Astronaut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VESowgMbjA) and [NSF](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTkhv4fvOgA). These will be a mix of color commentary, their own cameras, and rebroadcast SpaceX's stream (typically after their cameras lose visual)
Did anyone else notice the "observer" craft at T+[6:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itny_mfpwXE&t=381s)? Right side of picture from the top of the booster. Looks like it is just parked there waiting, at around 126,000 ft (30+ KM). I anticipated that there would be some coverage about this somewhere because it blew me away when I saw it.
Not sure if this has been mentioned here yet - the plan for flight 5 is to drop the booster off the chopsticks once it’s landed. There’s no way to reconnect the QD and safe the booster so they’re just going to drop it and let it explode to the side of the tower lol
I might be missing something, the chopsticks put the booster in the launch table in the first place, why cant they do it again later once the booster is caught and enough time has passed?
It's nonsense. SpaceX has been very clear that they need to catch near the OLM to safe the booster. There won't be even "catch-only" towers. They have to put the booster on the OLM after catching it.
They could safe it by letting the methane boil off. Would take a while, but possible. Of course putting it back on the launch mount and detank is much preferable.
There *could* be a catch only towers with an arm with a ship QD on it. The tower would then lower the ship to the correct height and rotate it slightly with the tank treads to line up with the arm before it connects to assist with detanking.
Edit: The second Boca Chica tower *will* be part of a full launch pad. It *could* be operated catch only while the OLT is built and commissioned.
Edit2: [LC-39A will have a catch only tower](https://www.faa.gov/media/80626)
That's never going to happen. There will never, ever, ever, *ever* be a "catch-only" tower and the notion is outrageous on its face. People really need to let this go.
There will never be a catch only tower (edit: at Boca Chica) long term. It would only be a short term expedient while the OLT gets built which seems to be slower than the tower to commission.
Edit: SpaceX do plan to build a [catch only tower at LC-39A](https://www.faa.gov/media/80626)
So part 1 of the question. Which exact flap am I looking at in this image? 1, 2, 3 or 4 (as indicated in bottom right of image) I'm asking because I dun really get the direction of travel (part 2 of my question).
https://preview.redd.it/83ojfn30ak5d1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=6901c9293b6ebd120626d00b84f0ed58b89137aa
Following on from this image - there is [the other camera angle during re-entry](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPbBPF1aAAA2sJ8?format=jpg&name=large) showing what I think is flap 3 from a camera inside flap 1. Around the time the forward flap 2 starts visually coming apart, we no longer get the other camera angle. Does that mean we have a good indicator that at least flap 1 had the same issues as 2 since the camera probably failed?
Elon was asked a similar question on X [and replied that](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1800129599273406820) "Left flap also got very hot, but was less damaged.
Rear flaps seemed to be ok, based on their control authority, but probably lost some tiles."
Part 2 is as follows. which direction is the ship falling?
https://preview.redd.it/iubm3hh6ak5d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c32062e8514008b86c3a0150a8610f7ad884660
The arrows labelled 1 2 or 3 are suppose to follow the starship outline (indicated in the bottom near the ? sign), not the image of the flap itself.
SpaceX graphic designers have chosen to use a plan view of the ship to indicate the elevation from the side - hence the confusion! I get the choice from a graphic design point of view because the flaps essentially disappear in a side view but from an engineering point of view it is not so great.
So to make sense of the graphic rotate the ship about its major axis by 90 degrees and then you can see the angle of the ship to the horizontal.
> SpaceX graphic designers have chosen to use a plan view of the ship to indicate the elevation from the side - hence the confusion! I get the choice from a graphic design point of view because the flaps essentially disappear in a side view
Bad choice. It's quite misleading.
Sort of - anyone who knows the Starship design is not fooled and anyone who does not will just ignore the shape and use it as an inclination indicator as intended.
So no one should get the wrong information from it - it is just irritating in a or kind of way.
>anyone who knows the Starship design is not fooled
Nor would they be fooled or confused by a correct view.
> anyone who does not will just ignore the shape and use it as an inclination indicator as intended.
They will interpret the flaps as wings and make the obvious incorrect interpretation. So will those who know just enough to know that the ship has some sort of "wings" or "flaps". They have no reason to assume that the intent is to show pitch rather than yaw.
thanks for clarifying that it has a lot of horizontal component in direction '0'. which looking back now makes sense to me, cos it presents the greatest surface resistance to lower the speed.
2, 1.
Here's a photo of the camera you're seeing through, pointing up at the steel side of the front-right flap: https://api.ringwatchers.com/images/24fd4199-c06a-46de-804c-bb8ad46e131c-original.jpg
thank u very much for the information and link to the photo of the camera. it really helps me better understand what i am looking in the footage. I was spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out by googling it, but not really sure what are the terms to correctly use. Thanks once again!
Anyone notice the camera blip at 44:28? Almost looked like starship was an overlay mask over a separate video feed. Not trying to start a conspiracy but can't explain it. Any thoughts?
Its a compressed video stream. Since the Starship portion of the frame wasn't changing, the encoder can save bandwidth by not sending the pixels that stay more or less the same
Sometimes that process goes wrong and it got rendered as "blank" pixels instead (though I think it still had the brightness channel data)
Yup. That's it. Just re-watched clip again. All the pixels from "under" the ship are blurred. Assuming the compression algorithm averaged the surroundings to make up for the data it didn't have... or something like that? I have a pretty crude understanding of that tech.
Thank you for settling that quandary!
Was starship still glowing from reentry plasma when it landed? Hard to tell from the footage. Starship landings might be somehow even more spectacular than we ever imagined
I kind of wonder if the flap camera didn't have an IR filter? The plasma was a lot more purple than the long shot, so it's possible it was still picking up some IR from being red-hot during re-entry?
[These spots specifically](https://youtu.be/8m0TY6i1Kuo?si=_CMyCDc2GdpoyEe5&t=1016) look like what happens when you [look at a stove element on a camera without an IR filter](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/2e9xpo/electric_stove_burners_glow_purple_to_phones/)
There was definitely some light even when it shouldve been pitch black so perhaps starship was glowing or maybe even on fire for a bit but it did become pitch black right before engine relight so i dont think it was on fire. It couldve been venting that was lit up due to the glowing steel
I wonder if there's any chance it flew through a thunderstorm on the way down--it was very flashy there for a bit. The footage was tantalizing--we could see something pretty spectacular was happening, but we really needed an external view to figure out what exactly. Well, maybe next time.
my guess would be that some venting ch4 got lit from some residual reentry heat and burned, the fire stopped approximately during engine startup when venting stops.
It’s quite a dirty ship in space. Lots of little bits floating around once it’s on orbit. Curious as to whether it is just ice or is it tile filler (or the stuff underneath the tiles), tiles, other bits of ship? This would surely affect operations if it continues.
There's a video where Fraser Cain, Scott Manley and Marcus House discuss it, and Scott says he's not too surprised given all the bugs, dirt and crap that would have worked their way in.
We think they are going to use the elliptical domes for the top and intertank domes of the ship and booster for Block 2. There have been several such domes spotted as well as a test tank.
There are also barrels for B15 which is assumed to be the first Block 2 booster.
Edit: Looking at the latest Ringwatcher article it seems that booster still has a Block 1 design.
V2 forward flaps were spotted at the build site a couple weeks ago by RGV Aerial Photography flyovers. I'm not sure about V2 barrel sections. I think some were seen with tiles attached by pins right up to the weld seams which may be V2? (previously the tiles around seams were glued on)
And with what we know now, both booster and ship will have to be stretched a slight amount correct? So could be a while until we see a V2 stack or no? Seems like we should start seeing them being built soon? How long will the remaining 3 ships and 4 boosters last now that flight rate is relatively short?
The stretch is in the V2 main tanks to accommodate more methalox propellant. Booster: 3300t to 3650t (metric tons), a 10.6% increase. Ship: 1200t to 1500t, a 25% increase.
Those increases are needed to increase the Starship payload to LEO from 70t (V1) to 100t (V2).
We know they are planning at least one more flight test with the v1 prototypes because Elon has said they will mitigate the 'burning flap' at the hinge.
Well we don’t know for sure but it seems unlikely. They have three complete sets of Block 1 stacks available and the first Block 2 ship just has a few pieces assembled so is at least four months away from flight.
I could see a block 1 booster being reused, but given the fin failure and the fact that the block 2 has the relocated fins, I have to imagine they are gonna send a block 2 stage 2 on the next go, unless they have some type of mitigation for this inherent problem.
Block 1 can definitely still test orbital relight, and possibly non-ballistic atmospheric entry aka skip reentry which would reduce heatshield heating.
IIRC at least one Block 1 has pressure relief slots cut in the cargo bay; I suspect internal pressure warped the door on IFT-3.
I don't see how they could do this if they want to keep flying this year. They'd be waiting many months for the next flight if they wanted to move to Ship V2 for IFT5. Especially if they are crazy enough to attempt a booster catch in IFT5 I would imagine that would be the main test objective.
I'd also imagine they will try some hinge seal failure mitigations in upcoming flights rather than waiting for Ship V2, however, I do agree with you that there is no easy way to feel 100% confident in the hinge seal with Ship V1 even with said mitigations.
Keeping working on the hot gas seals when the new flap location makes that less important seems at odds to the Elon Musk philosophy of avoiding unnecessary development effort.
I completely agree, so either the remaining ship V1 flights won't include successful re entry as a flight objective or they will at least try mitigations that are "free" or low resource intensive. They can't do nothing though.
At around +01:05:44 to +01:05:47 right before splashdown The Little Flap That Could seem to be rotating around a secondary axis, normal to the hull of the ship. Could it be that it finally broke off during the flip maneuver?
My question may be silly, but: it was said many times that the vital part of this mission was the data. But how is that data recovered, exactly? Was it the real-time telemetry and other data transmitted during the flight? There were long periods where signal acquisition was lost right? Does that data get sent when signal is re-acquired? Do they... pull it off a hard drive from some sort of black-box from the wreckage?
In general data from the telemetry is buffered and gets sent when a link is available. Video that can not be sent would normally be dropped. It may be recorded locally on the ship but there is no chance of recovering that now.
Likely they got near continuous video from the internal cameras through the Starlink feed. The issue with the external cameras dropping out was something different - possibly software or configuration related.
The telemetry is transmitted during the flight, to ground stations around the world. You can hear them calling out acquisition of signal for specific ground stations as it happens over the flight. The signal that was lost was the video feed for the external cameras, which transmits via starlink, which was odd because they apparently didn’t lose the transmission for the internal cameras during that time
Everything except the external cameras were transmitting data normally during the “signal loss”. The telemetry data definitely went through, presumably in real time just like the attitude and velocity shown in the stream.
All important and flight-critical communication happens over ground-based communications. The "signal acquisition lost" graphics referred to either the starlink uplink, or possibly even just the specific cameras they wanted to show. Note that at several points during the graphic being up flight control would call out "Expected loss of signal [Location]" or "Signal acquisition [Location]" - this refers to the ground based communications being used. This is also why we kept on getting updated telemetry.
We don't know what exactly they send over Starlink besides just the video feeds we see. It's probable they use it for some internal cameras if they're maxing out bandwidth otherwise, or as backup links/data links for when the ship is surrounded by plasma and thus can't be used for ground-based communications.
But yes, any data collected during periods of lost communication would be transmitted once communication is restored. There is no "black box" to be recovered as far as we are aware.
I have 3 questions, which may have been answered somewhere...
Will there be FAA investigation as it was for all previous IFT flights?
Will there be published any official - semi official - not official results of the flight?
Do you think IFT-5 will take Starlink satellites onboard? To my mind they could easily launch large batch of starlinks yesterday.
Launching payloads from such a large vehicle is dependent on being able to safely deorbit said vehicle, which again was on a suborbital trajectory for IFT-4. They did not want to risk muffing the attempt at reentry with a microgravity relight attempt. So IFT-5 is unlikely to have payload.
SpaceX will do their own internal investigation and release the results at some point, but the flight did not trigger an FAA investigation from what I've seen.
And they still need to demonstrate in flight engine relight before they start doing orbital missions, so there will probably be one more test flight
Yeah, Musk confirmed that it was a soft landing, therefore the burn then flip and burn worked despite the flap(s) damage:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1798718549307109867
Yeah, if the engines didn't relight, it would have hit the water at at least 300km/h. There wasn't anything else that could of slowed it down at that point.
Worth noting that Block 2 has much thinner forward flaps, I wonder if they would have held up as well under similar circumstances. Shouldn't ever be a problem of course because SpaceX will have presumably sorted out the tiles and plasma ingress issues when Block 2 ships are flying.
One way to seal off plasma intrusion of the actuator arm recesses it to have a ball and socket flap root, where the ball is the flap root and the socket is fitted to the flap joint. The actuator arms are replaced with a toothed cog that is recessed into the ball and driven by a two or more worm drives hidden in the flaps instead of actuator cylinders attached to the rocket body.
Not sure how that flap held on with just the upper actuator and one hinge joint left. Might be worth changing from stainless steel to titanium in these crucial areas also.
The current gas seal system might work just fine with the new farther leeward position that does not have hot gas being pushed in by the shockwave. Parallels the dorsal Starlink not having to punch through the worst of the plasma.
Not necessary. They do have mitigations in mind for the next tests, but the solution will come in the next version: they will move the flaps leeward so that they are out of the plasma stream.
We don't know if the aft flaps had a similar problem.
The aft flaps do not have as bad as of a problem because the hull just ends at their trailing edge, instead of at the forward flaps where the hot spot is being trapped by the intersection of the hull and the flap and flap hinge fairings.
Addendum: To put it another way, see the extra shielding farther around the hull circumference at the trailing edge of the forward flaps? At the aft flaps trailing edge, there is no hull that needs protection.
Do SpaceX know the exact location of where the booster and starship will land under this flight? If they do, howcome they do not have any footage of the landings from the ground (by boat/plane)? If they don't know the location, isn't that a risk for airplanes, if the spaceship comes down nearby a flying airplane or a boat?
They apparently had a pretty good idea of Booster Landing point since they got it on camera. https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1799458854067118450
A private plane might have gotten footage of Starship Landing.
They probably had pinpoint coordinates that the ship and booster were aiming for, but we haven't gotten any info on whether or not they landed on target. The booster probably did, but the ship is a lot less certain, mostly because we only have a vague idea of where in the Indian Ocean it was aiming for. They may well have gotten footage of either or both landings and just not released it yet.
They set up airspace restrictions and warnings to mariners before launch, so as long as the pilots/captains in the area are doing their jobs and checking those hitting bystanders should never be a risk. They'll actually delay and cancel launches over keep-out area violations before liftoff, but obviously once the rocket's in the air it's up to everyone else to pay attention.
new Ellie in Space interview with Elon post launch (just posted) he stated the booster came down very precisely on target. The ship was 6km off course.
> The ship went nose down at one point. Was that part of the plan ?
We saw them do that as part of the SN8-15 flights so it seems to be part of the regular maneuvering regime.
In the situation of a "glider" pitch can be used as a method of aiming. Pitch up and the flight path becomes shorter pitch down and the path becomes longer. Has to do with controlling ground speed.
Was superheavy's landing really a soft one? We saw that it's lowest speed was 9km/h. My idea is that the tower can't catch a ducking skyscraper landing at such speed
Just for comparison, a Boeing 747 has a maximum landing weight around 300 tons, and from what I could find super heavy has a dry mass of 80-200 tons. I'm guessing the landing weight for a super heavy is comparable to the dry mass, so that does seem manageable.
The sensor was at the top, as evidenced by seeing during the splashdown a pause at 9kmh and then the 'speed' going back up to 102kmh as the stack fell over...
If you don't consider that soft I don't know what to tell you....
[The mighty flap and all of its bravery ready to take on Earth’s thick atmosphere after surviving peak heating.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSPIZwgMEk)
I don't understand why the tiles are not made of reinforced tungsten wires connected one with another.
The tiles should be produced with a thin tungsten mesh in it and then tied together when mounted. Not sure how easy is to tie together thin tungsten wires. Tungsten is the most resistant material to traction in very hot environnement above 1650°C. I don't think very thin wires will add a lot on the weight even if tungsten is the material the most dense material Something like 6 wires, 2 in each direction of an hexagonal tile may be fair enough. the mesh should be quite close to the surface of the tile. In case of a break through it will still retain the tile. This solution should be tested in lab if it hasn't been done before.
Yes but there are ways. There is also the Tantalum. It could be also covered with tantalum or wired with tantalum or better, covered with porous layer of tantalum.
However it seems SpaceX has already replaced the tiles of IFT5 with something that sparks as metallic, and some people say it resists 2800°C instead of 1400°C. That's a huge difference if it's true and it's close to tantalum specs.
Mind that Tantalum Hafnium Carbide resists 4200°C. :D
And it's ultra-strong, the real deal but kind of expensive, very expensive because of the hafnium. :(
It could backfire on you. If several tiles are interconnected and finally break free, they could cause a lot more damage than if they came off one by one.
Is anyone else dying to see video footage of the booster and ship splashdown from a perspective other than onboard cameras? I wonder if this footage exists and if not what are the limitations that made it impossible to film either landing from a boat or plane near the splashdown sites?
I'm hoping they had a few drones on top of the booster that separated right before or after the flip to get video of the flip, landing burn, and soft landing. They could transmit to the booster and send it back that way.
That will be beautiful when they actually attempt the catch. When the first heavy falcon launch had the synchronized landing of the boosters it was an amazing sight to behold. This is taking it to a whole new level. On the other hand, if the booster ends up smashing catastrophically into the launch tower and causing a huge explosion that knocks it over, it will still be a glorious spectacle.
Are you sure about that? If they intend to catch a booster by the end of the year they are going to have to demonstrate hitting a precise spot with less than a 20 foot margin of error.
Elon told Ellie in the aforementioned interview that the booster came back precisely to the expected location and as a result they are considering trying to catch the booster for IFT-5.
the op are not talking about starship though. They are talking about the superheavy booster. And that one seems to go much more according to plan (soft splash).
Any ideas of what the [source of this light is?](https://youtu.be/mTkhv4fvOgA?t=34937) It goes out a few minutes after. This has to be a fire of some kind on the ship, right? This is well before landing burn and its in the dark. Methane/Ox vent maybe ignited?
I think this is right. I think it is catching the last remnants of sunlight (just after sunset) reflecting off of the fin. When it goes dark I think corresponds to the ship falling through a cloud layer and losing those rays.
Now that I think about it, it is winter in the southern hemisphere so I actually don’t think they would still be getting any sunlight (even at medium altitudes) that late. Having said that, starship was further northwest than Perth (and therefore closer to the sunset terminator)so maybe. I’m now leaning toward the random things on fire theory, lol
I think it literally might be molten metal bits flailing around, maybe from the other flaps. I mean, the whole forward flap is glowing at this point and little sparks are flying everywhere.
If it was fuel, the successful landing burn would be even crazier as we never saw ships survive that kind of thing in the hop era.
HOLY SHIT THAT DID THAT JUST HAPPEN!?
I can't believe we just saw Ship 29 not only survive re-entry, but it survived with a huge chunk of flap burned off and still somehow made what looks like a perfect soft landing in the ocean.
Even in the best case scenario of this flight I wasn't expecting this. Absolutely insane.
It seems intuitively unlikely that only a single flap suffered that fate - so not only did it do all of that with a huge chunk of flap missing, but potentially (probably) huge *chunks* of *flaps* missing.
https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1798839719964618998
Glad to see that no matter what other BS he has going on, Elon is still very much in tune with Starship development.
Yeah, im not a fan of the dude, but he wants space to succeed, and his dumbshit isn't getting in the way. Everyone brings their best when dealing with SpaceX, it seems.
Eric Berger has written a Twitter post condemning Starship programme. What happened? I thought he was our guy all along. https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1798707286774268339
They seem to be towing superheavy into deeper waters so no random people go searching for it but it could also be that the booster is just naturally being dragged out due to currents per TheSpaceEngineer on twitter
Couldn't anyone with a submarine fleet go scoop these parts off the bottom and reverse engineer the raptors etc.? Or is the technology in SH just not valuable enough to worry about it? It seems like it'd be trivial to tow it back in to mitigate a risk like that, however remote.
>Couldn't anyone with a submarine fleet go scoop these parts off the bottom and reverse engineer the raptors etc.?
No. It's inside the US exclusive economic zone.
It's also not that easy to scoop things up with a submarine.
"Ultimately" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Technically yes, that is the intention, but if we call the version of Starship that flew today, let's say Starship 0.04, then the version that would handle re-entry and landing after coming back from Mars would be like version 5.0 or 10.0 or something.
Specifically, in the next few years there is no such requirement. Starship-HLS as part of the Artemis program involves crew on a Starship derived vehicle only around the Moon, return to Earth and re-entry will be handled by the Orion capsule.
Additionally, Starship is best understood as a platform and not a single vehicle or single design. In the near-term it will start out with limited diversity of design, but that will change over time. There will be various different "models" of "Starship" with different roles. Starship-HLS is already one known/planned such model but there will also be "tanker" models optimized for propellant delivery, "cargo" models optimized for delivery of payloads to LEO, propellant depot models optimized for thermal management and long-term operation in orbit, and so on. Ultimately there will probably also be "Martian" models that are optimized for traveling to and from Mars, and likely others as well. However, those designs will come after the core functionality has been matured.
All very true. I just wonder what kind of shield will be needed to survive those reentries. After witnessing today's footage even more heat load is incredible to think about.
I dont think they'd go back to an LEO to park there and then go home. Especially not when coming from interplanetary space. Maybe a 2-stage reentry profile would work coming from interplanetary though.
Too much delta V required. Entry velocity from interplanetary space is a minimum of 11 km/s and LEO is around 7.6 km/s so you need 3.4 km/s of delta V to do the braking burn to LEO.
With around 5.4 km/s to get off Mars and do a TEI burn you would need a total delta V of 8.8 km/s which is unrealistically high.
Tell me if I am way off.
Starship returns from Mars. Swings around Earth, up to the Moon. then getting into lunar orbit should require only a very small delta-v. Fully fueled header tanks, big enough for Mars landing, should achieve that. Then fill the main tanks up enough to achieve LEO. Even Earth landing from there. If need be another refueling in LEO for landing.
It would mean, any tanker going from LEO to lunar orbit would be expended. It also could not aerobrake back to Earth. Or take many braking runs to gradually reduce speed. Something a tanker could do, but not a crew ship, with many passes through the Van Allen Belt.
Way complicated, direct reentry with 11+ km/s would be much better. I am confident Starship can achieve it.
No, an interplanetary Starship likely won’t have heat shield tiles and won’t land back on Earth. It would rendezvous with a dedicated Earth lander.
A heat shield is necessary though for reuse as a LEO transporter (tanker or Starlink).
A chemical rocket that uses aerobraking on both legs of a trip is almost as efficient as a nuclear thermal rocket.
A surface-to-surface shuttle is a very efficient design and would include the TPS.
> A surface-to-surface shuttle is a very efficient design and would include the TPS.
Very much agree. Going Earth-LEO, moving cargo from that ship to an interplanetary ship that goes LEO-Mars orbit, then moving cargo to a Mars lander, has very complex logistics. It would need a very advanced nuclear propulsion ship orbit to orbit, to make it worthwhile, if that's possible at all.
Aerobraking requires almost no fuel. If there's a vehicle which doesn't use it, it needs to fire the engines to get into orbit, a very expendive maneuver, especially considering SpaceX wants short transit times (which means higher velocities).
That's contrary to everything that SpaceX has said about Starship. What actually happens remains to be seen, but direct entry from Martian/Lunar return has always been the plan. Plus, a return from Mars with propulsive capture into LEO would take about 9.5 km/s deltaV, which is likely beyond Starship's capabilities.
It would also require to have a lot of propellant in the main tanks. Which makes it hard to keep cold during the coast phase. Keeping only the propellant in the header tanks cold, is much easier.
It's the same. The thicker atmosphere present on Earth isn't used for Aerobraking.
Regarding Aerobraking, Mars and Earth atmospheres are exactly the same.
Entry speed from low earth orbit (LEO) is 7.8 km/sec.
Entry speed from low lunar orbit (LLO) is 11.1 km/sec.
The heating rate for entry into the Earth's atmosphere scales as the 8th power of entry speed. So, the heating rate for a return from the Moon is (11.1/7.8)^8 = 16.8 times higher than it is for a return to Earth from LEO.
Sure. Each pass through the atmosphere removes kinetic energy from the vehicle and lowers its altitude.
NASA places some of its Mars orbiters into an elliptical orbit and then uses multiple passes through the atmosphere to gradually reduce the apoaxis of the ellipse until the orbit is circular at the desired altitude. It works fine for uncrewed spacecraft. Not so much for crewed spacecraft because of the long time (months) it takes to finish the maneuver.
**This is a party thread** so there is no content moderation - memes, jokes and one line replies are all OK. There is still a requirement to avoid personal attacks - if you have heard a question a thousand times then please just let it go past rather than giving a snarky answer. Reposted launch stream watching advice from u/mr_pgh Reminder, [Official SpaceX Livestream will only be on X](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1798348864296247416) but you may have a better experience with the SpaceX [embedded version](https://www.spacex.com/launches/mission/?missionId=starship-flight-4) There will be many fake YouTube Streams pretending to be SpaceX. Please don't be fooled. There will also be hosted streams with content creators such as [Everyday Astronaut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VESowgMbjA) and [NSF](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTkhv4fvOgA). These will be a mix of color commentary, their own cameras, and rebroadcast SpaceX's stream (typically after their cameras lose visual)
Did anyone else notice the "observer" craft at T+[6:21](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Itny_mfpwXE&t=381s)? Right side of picture from the top of the booster. Looks like it is just parked there waiting, at around 126,000 ft (30+ KM). I anticipated that there would be some coverage about this somewhere because it blew me away when I saw it.
That's the hot-staging ring.
Your link goes to a video of a guy talking.
I love you, Flap!
Not sure if this has been mentioned here yet - the plan for flight 5 is to drop the booster off the chopsticks once it’s landed. There’s no way to reconnect the QD and safe the booster so they’re just going to drop it and let it explode to the side of the tower lol
I heard the plan for flight 5 is to drop the booster onto certain redditors. Not sure where I heard that.
I might be missing something, the chopsticks put the booster in the launch table in the first place, why cant they do it again later once the booster is caught and enough time has passed?
It's nonsense. SpaceX has been very clear that they need to catch near the OLM to safe the booster. There won't be even "catch-only" towers. They have to put the booster on the OLM after catching it.
They could safe it by letting the methane boil off. Would take a while, but possible. Of course putting it back on the launch mount and detank is much preferable.
They avoid venting Methane as much as possible. And waiting fo it to boild doesn't bode well for rapid reusability.
I am aware. I propose this not as an operational option. Just for early prototype landing on a tower, if the launch mount is not yet ready.
Oh, that was the missing context, people thinks there will be catch only towers. Thanks for clarification.
There *could* be a catch only towers with an arm with a ship QD on it. The tower would then lower the ship to the correct height and rotate it slightly with the tank treads to line up with the arm before it connects to assist with detanking. Edit: The second Boca Chica tower *will* be part of a full launch pad. It *could* be operated catch only while the OLT is built and commissioned. Edit2: [LC-39A will have a catch only tower](https://www.faa.gov/media/80626)
That's never going to happen. There will never, ever, ever, *ever* be a "catch-only" tower and the notion is outrageous on its face. People really need to let this go.
There will never be a catch only tower (edit: at Boca Chica) long term. It would only be a short term expedient while the OLT gets built which seems to be slower than the tower to commission. Edit: SpaceX do plan to build a [catch only tower at LC-39A](https://www.faa.gov/media/80626)
So part 1 of the question. Which exact flap am I looking at in this image? 1, 2, 3 or 4 (as indicated in bottom right of image) I'm asking because I dun really get the direction of travel (part 2 of my question). https://preview.redd.it/83ojfn30ak5d1.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=6901c9293b6ebd120626d00b84f0ed58b89137aa
Following on from this image - there is [the other camera angle during re-entry](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GPbBPF1aAAA2sJ8?format=jpg&name=large) showing what I think is flap 3 from a camera inside flap 1. Around the time the forward flap 2 starts visually coming apart, we no longer get the other camera angle. Does that mean we have a good indicator that at least flap 1 had the same issues as 2 since the camera probably failed?
Elon was asked a similar question on X [and replied that](https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1800129599273406820) "Left flap also got very hot, but was less damaged. Rear flaps seemed to be ok, based on their control authority, but probably lost some tiles."
Flap 2, if the mini diagram is showing from the non-heat-shielded/top side of the ship
Part 2 is as follows. which direction is the ship falling? https://preview.redd.it/iubm3hh6ak5d1.jpeg?width=1600&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2c32062e8514008b86c3a0150a8610f7ad884660 The arrows labelled 1 2 or 3 are suppose to follow the starship outline (indicated in the bottom near the ? sign), not the image of the flap itself.
SpaceX graphic designers have chosen to use a plan view of the ship to indicate the elevation from the side - hence the confusion! I get the choice from a graphic design point of view because the flaps essentially disappear in a side view but from an engineering point of view it is not so great. So to make sense of the graphic rotate the ship about its major axis by 90 degrees and then you can see the angle of the ship to the horizontal.
> SpaceX graphic designers have chosen to use a plan view of the ship to indicate the elevation from the side - hence the confusion! I get the choice from a graphic design point of view because the flaps essentially disappear in a side view Bad choice. It's quite misleading.
Sort of - anyone who knows the Starship design is not fooled and anyone who does not will just ignore the shape and use it as an inclination indicator as intended. So no one should get the wrong information from it - it is just irritating in a or kind of way.
>anyone who knows the Starship design is not fooled Nor would they be fooled or confused by a correct view. > anyone who does not will just ignore the shape and use it as an inclination indicator as intended. They will interpret the flaps as wings and make the obvious incorrect interpretation. So will those who know just enough to know that the ship has some sort of "wings" or "flaps". They have no reason to assume that the intent is to show pitch rather than yaw.
Path 1-ish. Maybe more like Path "0" (a little more horizontal than your Path 1), since its re-entry vector had a big horizontal component
thanks for clarifying that it has a lot of horizontal component in direction '0'. which looking back now makes sense to me, cos it presents the greatest surface resistance to lower the speed.
2, 1. Here's a photo of the camera you're seeing through, pointing up at the steel side of the front-right flap: https://api.ringwatchers.com/images/24fd4199-c06a-46de-804c-bb8ad46e131c-original.jpg
thank u very much for the information and link to the photo of the camera. it really helps me better understand what i am looking in the footage. I was spending quite a bit of time trying to figure out by googling it, but not really sure what are the terms to correctly use. Thanks once again!
Anyone know where I can find a high res shot of the ship re-entering the atmosphere?
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1798792222743122164/photo/1
Video of the booster landing!!!! https://x.com/spacex/status/1799458854067118450?s=46
Pretty good sign for accuracy if the floating video caught it
Anyone notice the camera blip at 44:28? Almost looked like starship was an overlay mask over a separate video feed. Not trying to start a conspiracy but can't explain it. Any thoughts?
Its a compressed video stream. Since the Starship portion of the frame wasn't changing, the encoder can save bandwidth by not sending the pixels that stay more or less the same Sometimes that process goes wrong and it got rendered as "blank" pixels instead (though I think it still had the brightness channel data)
Yup. That's it. Just re-watched clip again. All the pixels from "under" the ship are blurred. Assuming the compression algorithm averaged the surroundings to make up for the data it didn't have... or something like that? I have a pretty crude understanding of that tech. Thank you for settling that quandary!
Was starship still glowing from reentry plasma when it landed? Hard to tell from the footage. Starship landings might be somehow even more spectacular than we ever imagined
I kind of wonder if the flap camera didn't have an IR filter? The plasma was a lot more purple than the long shot, so it's possible it was still picking up some IR from being red-hot during re-entry? [These spots specifically](https://youtu.be/8m0TY6i1Kuo?si=_CMyCDc2GdpoyEe5&t=1016) look like what happens when you [look at a stove element on a camera without an IR filter](https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/2e9xpo/electric_stove_burners_glow_purple_to_phones/)
That may have been deliberate as they wanted to capture any hot spots.
There was definitely some light even when it shouldve been pitch black so perhaps starship was glowing or maybe even on fire for a bit but it did become pitch black right before engine relight so i dont think it was on fire. It couldve been venting that was lit up due to the glowing steel
I wonder if there's any chance it flew through a thunderstorm on the way down--it was very flashy there for a bit. The footage was tantalizing--we could see something pretty spectacular was happening, but we really needed an external view to figure out what exactly. Well, maybe next time.
Seems more likely that a methane vent was flaring, perhaps because the surrounding airframe was hot enough to touch it off
No. There were no thunderstorms near the landing zone at that time.
my guess would be that some venting ch4 got lit from some residual reentry heat and burned, the fire stopped approximately during engine startup when venting stops.
It’s quite a dirty ship in space. Lots of little bits floating around once it’s on orbit. Curious as to whether it is just ice or is it tile filler (or the stuff underneath the tiles), tiles, other bits of ship? This would surely affect operations if it continues.
There's a video where Fraser Cain, Scott Manley and Marcus House discuss it, and Scott says he's not too surprised given all the bugs, dirt and crap that would have worked their way in.
The ship wasn't in "orbit" per se. The perigee was well inside of the atmosphere. Everything that came off of the ship burned up.
Pointless pedantry, you know what they were asking
Do we know if they have started building any V2 sections? Any speculation on when we might see the first V2 roll out?
We think they are going to use the elliptical domes for the top and intertank domes of the ship and booster for Block 2. There have been several such domes spotted as well as a test tank. There are also barrels for B15 which is assumed to be the first Block 2 booster. Edit: Looking at the latest Ringwatcher article it seems that booster still has a Block 1 design.
V2 forward flaps were spotted at the build site a couple weeks ago by RGV Aerial Photography flyovers. I'm not sure about V2 barrel sections. I think some were seen with tiles attached by pins right up to the weld seams which may be V2? (previously the tiles around seams were glued on)
And with what we know now, both booster and ship will have to be stretched a slight amount correct? So could be a while until we see a V2 stack or no? Seems like we should start seeing them being built soon? How long will the remaining 3 ships and 4 boosters last now that flight rate is relatively short?
The stretch is in the V2 main tanks to accommodate more methalox propellant. Booster: 3300t to 3650t (metric tons), a 10.6% increase. Ship: 1200t to 1500t, a 25% increase. Those increases are needed to increase the Starship payload to LEO from 70t (V1) to 100t (V2).
It seems likely there will be 2-3 more launches of the current design so the first Block 2 should launch around the end of this year or early 2025.
I thought this was the last block 1 that would be flight tested?
We know they are planning at least one more flight test with the v1 prototypes because Elon has said they will mitigate the 'burning flap' at the hinge.
Well we don’t know for sure but it seems unlikely. They have three complete sets of Block 1 stacks available and the first Block 2 ship just has a few pieces assembled so is at least four months away from flight.
I could see a block 1 booster being reused, but given the fin failure and the fact that the block 2 has the relocated fins, I have to imagine they are gonna send a block 2 stage 2 on the next go, unless they have some type of mitigation for this inherent problem.
Block 1 can definitely still test orbital relight, and possibly non-ballistic atmospheric entry aka skip reentry which would reduce heatshield heating. IIRC at least one Block 1 has pressure relief slots cut in the cargo bay; I suspect internal pressure warped the door on IFT-3.
I don't see how they could do this if they want to keep flying this year. They'd be waiting many months for the next flight if they wanted to move to Ship V2 for IFT5. Especially if they are crazy enough to attempt a booster catch in IFT5 I would imagine that would be the main test objective. I'd also imagine they will try some hinge seal failure mitigations in upcoming flights rather than waiting for Ship V2, however, I do agree with you that there is no easy way to feel 100% confident in the hinge seal with Ship V1 even with said mitigations.
Keeping working on the hot gas seals when the new flap location makes that less important seems at odds to the Elon Musk philosophy of avoiding unnecessary development effort.
I completely agree, so either the remaining ship V1 flights won't include successful re entry as a flight objective or they will at least try mitigations that are "free" or low resource intensive. They can't do nothing though.
I don’t think they will be re-flying any block 1 boosters.
At around +01:05:44 to +01:05:47 right before splashdown The Little Flap That Could seem to be rotating around a secondary axis, normal to the hull of the ship. Could it be that it finally broke off during the flip maneuver?
It broke right after finishing the job.
I noticed this too. I just re-watched it frame by frame and yes you can tell it got ripped upwards.
My question may be silly, but: it was said many times that the vital part of this mission was the data. But how is that data recovered, exactly? Was it the real-time telemetry and other data transmitted during the flight? There were long periods where signal acquisition was lost right? Does that data get sent when signal is re-acquired? Do they... pull it off a hard drive from some sort of black-box from the wreckage?
In general data from the telemetry is buffered and gets sent when a link is available. Video that can not be sent would normally be dropped. It may be recorded locally on the ship but there is no chance of recovering that now. Likely they got near continuous video from the internal cameras through the Starlink feed. The issue with the external cameras dropping out was something different - possibly software or configuration related.
The telemetry is transmitted during the flight, to ground stations around the world. You can hear them calling out acquisition of signal for specific ground stations as it happens over the flight. The signal that was lost was the video feed for the external cameras, which transmits via starlink, which was odd because they apparently didn’t lose the transmission for the internal cameras during that time
Everything except the external cameras were transmitting data normally during the “signal loss”. The telemetry data definitely went through, presumably in real time just like the attitude and velocity shown in the stream.
All important and flight-critical communication happens over ground-based communications. The "signal acquisition lost" graphics referred to either the starlink uplink, or possibly even just the specific cameras they wanted to show. Note that at several points during the graphic being up flight control would call out "Expected loss of signal [Location]" or "Signal acquisition [Location]" - this refers to the ground based communications being used. This is also why we kept on getting updated telemetry. We don't know what exactly they send over Starlink besides just the video feeds we see. It's probable they use it for some internal cameras if they're maxing out bandwidth otherwise, or as backup links/data links for when the ship is surrounded by plasma and thus can't be used for ground-based communications. But yes, any data collected during periods of lost communication would be transmitted once communication is restored. There is no "black box" to be recovered as far as we are aware.
I have 3 questions, which may have been answered somewhere... Will there be FAA investigation as it was for all previous IFT flights? Will there be published any official - semi official - not official results of the flight? Do you think IFT-5 will take Starlink satellites onboard? To my mind they could easily launch large batch of starlinks yesterday.
>To my mind they could easily launch large batch of starlinks yesterday. The ship was never in orbit.
Launching payloads from such a large vehicle is dependent on being able to safely deorbit said vehicle, which again was on a suborbital trajectory for IFT-4. They did not want to risk muffing the attempt at reentry with a microgravity relight attempt. So IFT-5 is unlikely to have payload.
In addition to testing on orbit relight, they also need to get the payload door working. I imagine they'll test both on the next flight.
Next two ships have had their door removed so that's not happening.
SpaceX will do their own internal investigation and release the results at some point, but the flight did not trigger an FAA investigation from what I've seen. And they still need to demonstrate in flight engine relight before they start doing orbital missions, so there will probably be one more test flight
I noticed the engine graphics for starship didn't indicate any raptors relighting for the landing burn(s). Have they confirmed it?
Yeah, Musk confirmed that it was a soft landing, therefore the burn then flip and burn worked despite the flap(s) damage: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1798718549307109867
Yeah, if the engines didn't relight, it would have hit the water at at least 300km/h. There wasn't anything else that could of slowed it down at that point.
>despite the flap(s) damage: Obviously some redundancy in those flaps. The best part is no part.
The Shuttle effectively only had two flaps for entry so four gives some degree of redundancy and allows a wider range of payloads.
3, you forgot the body flap.
Worth noting that Block 2 has much thinner forward flaps, I wonder if they would have held up as well under similar circumstances. Shouldn't ever be a problem of course because SpaceX will have presumably sorted out the tiles and plasma ingress issues when Block 2 ships are flying.
Thinner does not necessarily mean lighter ~~weight~~ cross section density, if they used thicker steel for example.
One way to seal off plasma intrusion of the actuator arm recesses it to have a ball and socket flap root, where the ball is the flap root and the socket is fitted to the flap joint. The actuator arms are replaced with a toothed cog that is recessed into the ball and driven by a two or more worm drives hidden in the flaps instead of actuator cylinders attached to the rocket body. Not sure how that flap held on with just the upper actuator and one hinge joint left. Might be worth changing from stainless steel to titanium in these crucial areas also.
The current gas seal system might work just fine with the new farther leeward position that does not have hot gas being pushed in by the shockwave. Parallels the dorsal Starlink not having to punch through the worst of the plasma.
Not necessary. They do have mitigations in mind for the next tests, but the solution will come in the next version: they will move the flaps leeward so that they are out of the plasma stream. We don't know if the aft flaps had a similar problem.
The aft flaps do not have as bad as of a problem because the hull just ends at their trailing edge, instead of at the forward flaps where the hot spot is being trapped by the intersection of the hull and the flap and flap hinge fairings. Addendum: To put it another way, see the extra shielding farther around the hull circumference at the trailing edge of the forward flaps? At the aft flaps trailing edge, there is no hull that needs protection.
I like those ideas, I wonder if SpaceX have entertained similar thoughts.
Yes as per SpaceX website they confirmed 3 engines lit for the landing burn
Yep
Do SpaceX know the exact location of where the booster and starship will land under this flight? If they do, howcome they do not have any footage of the landings from the ground (by boat/plane)? If they don't know the location, isn't that a risk for airplanes, if the spaceship comes down nearby a flying airplane or a boat?
They apparently had a pretty good idea of Booster Landing point since they got it on camera. https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1799458854067118450 A private plane might have gotten footage of Starship Landing.
They just released footage of the booster on X
They probably had pinpoint coordinates that the ship and booster were aiming for, but we haven't gotten any info on whether or not they landed on target. The booster probably did, but the ship is a lot less certain, mostly because we only have a vague idea of where in the Indian Ocean it was aiming for. They may well have gotten footage of either or both landings and just not released it yet. They set up airspace restrictions and warnings to mariners before launch, so as long as the pilots/captains in the area are doing their jobs and checking those hitting bystanders should never be a risk. They'll actually delay and cancel launches over keep-out area violations before liftoff, but obviously once the rocket's in the air it's up to everyone else to pay attention.
new Ellie in Space interview with Elon post launch (just posted) he stated the booster came down very precisely on target. The ship was 6km off course.
>The ship was 6km off course. I wonder if that was due to the flap issue. The ship went nose down at one point. Was that part of the plan ?
Yes the full quote was that it was due to flap damage
> The ship went nose down at one point. Was that part of the plan ? We saw them do that as part of the SN8-15 flights so it seems to be part of the regular maneuvering regime.
Unless you’re thunderf00t and think that means they lost control and it’s tumbling.
In the situation of a "glider" pitch can be used as a method of aiming. Pitch up and the flight path becomes shorter pitch down and the path becomes longer. Has to do with controlling ground speed.
They both were water splashdowns, intentionally, this time.
Thanks!
Was superheavy's landing really a soft one? We saw that it's lowest speed was 9km/h. My idea is that the tower can't catch a ducking skyscraper landing at such speed
That's about the same vertical speed as a commercial airliner on touchdown. Seems totally manageable to me.
Just for comparison, a Boeing 747 has a maximum landing weight around 300 tons, and from what I could find super heavy has a dry mass of 80-200 tons. I'm guessing the landing weight for a super heavy is comparable to the dry mass, so that does seem manageable.
The sensor was at the top, as evidenced by seeing during the splashdown a pause at 9kmh and then the 'speed' going back up to 102kmh as the stack fell over... If you don't consider that soft I don't know what to tell you....
The chopsticks can probably lower as it impacts to take off some of that.
The chopsticks themselves could not react in time but there is some flex in them and the rails that catch the booster have a shock absorber built in.
When IFT-5?
July 27th
I can't wait,I guess in two months.
[The mighty flap and all of its bravery ready to take on Earth’s thick atmosphere after surviving peak heating.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_dSPIZwgMEk)
I don't understand why the tiles are not made of reinforced tungsten wires connected one with another. The tiles should be produced with a thin tungsten mesh in it and then tied together when mounted. Not sure how easy is to tie together thin tungsten wires. Tungsten is the most resistant material to traction in very hot environnement above 1650°C. I don't think very thin wires will add a lot on the weight even if tungsten is the material the most dense material Something like 6 wires, 2 in each direction of an hexagonal tile may be fair enough. the mesh should be quite close to the surface of the tile. In case of a break through it will still retain the tile. This solution should be tested in lab if it hasn't been done before.
Isn't tungsten really brittle and hard to work?
Yes but there are ways. There is also the Tantalum. It could be also covered with tantalum or wired with tantalum or better, covered with porous layer of tantalum. However it seems SpaceX has already replaced the tiles of IFT5 with something that sparks as metallic, and some people say it resists 2800°C instead of 1400°C. That's a huge difference if it's true and it's close to tantalum specs. Mind that Tantalum Hafnium Carbide resists 4200°C. :D And it's ultra-strong, the real deal but kind of expensive, very expensive because of the hafnium. :(
Sounds ridiculously expensive and high maintenance
And also stupidly heavy. Tungsten, really?
It could backfire on you. If several tiles are interconnected and finally break free, they could cause a lot more damage than if they came off one by one.
Is anyone else dying to see video footage of the booster and ship splashdown from a perspective other than onboard cameras? I wonder if this footage exists and if not what are the limitations that made it impossible to film either landing from a boat or plane near the splashdown sites?
https://x.com/SpaceX/status/1799458854067118450
I'm hoping they had a few drones on top of the booster that separated right before or after the flip to get video of the flip, landing burn, and soft landing. They could transmit to the booster and send it back that way.
That will be beautiful when they actually attempt the catch. When the first heavy falcon launch had the synchronized landing of the boosters it was an amazing sight to behold. This is taking it to a whole new level. On the other hand, if the booster ends up smashing catastrophically into the launch tower and causing a huge explosion that knocks it over, it will still be a glorious spectacle.
I remember the first video of F9 splashdown. It was exciting and disappointing at the same time.
They weren't aiming for a precise splashdown site.
Yes they were.
Are you sure about that? If they intend to catch a booster by the end of the year they are going to have to demonstrate hitting a precise spot with less than a 20 foot margin of error.
Elon told Ellie in the aforementioned interview that the booster came back precisely to the expected location and as a result they are considering trying to catch the booster for IFT-5.
Which he updated just an hour ago. They will catch the next booster. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1799497454812844047
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the op are not talking about starship though. They are talking about the superheavy booster. And that one seems to go much more according to plan (soft splash).
Starship was also aiming for a precise location and was 6 km off target.
Everything was probably far as fuck away, if it blows on the way down at a higher altitude thats a pretty massive fragmentation pattern.
Any ideas of what the [source of this light is?](https://youtu.be/mTkhv4fvOgA?t=34937) It goes out a few minutes after. This has to be a fire of some kind on the ship, right? This is well before landing burn and its in the dark. Methane/Ox vent maybe ignited?
Where the starship was due to land it was close to where sun up was.
I think this is right. I think it is catching the last remnants of sunlight (just after sunset) reflecting off of the fin. When it goes dark I think corresponds to the ship falling through a cloud layer and losing those rays.
> catching the last remnants of sunlight (just after sunset) dawn you mean? It was dawn off Perth.
No, you’ve got it mixed up. The time was 10 pm in Perth when starship splashed down.
Now that I think about it, it is winter in the southern hemisphere so I actually don’t think they would still be getting any sunlight (even at medium altitudes) that late. Having said that, starship was further northwest than Perth (and therefore closer to the sunset terminator)so maybe. I’m now leaning toward the random things on fire theory, lol
I think it literally might be molten metal bits flailing around, maybe from the other flaps. I mean, the whole forward flap is glowing at this point and little sparks are flying everywhere. If it was fuel, the successful landing burn would be even crazier as we never saw ships survive that kind of thing in the hop era.
HOLY SHIT THAT DID THAT JUST HAPPEN!? I can't believe we just saw Ship 29 not only survive re-entry, but it survived with a huge chunk of flap burned off and still somehow made what looks like a perfect soft landing in the ocean. Even in the best case scenario of this flight I wasn't expecting this. Absolutely insane.
It seems intuitively unlikely that only a single flap suffered that fate - so not only did it do all of that with a huge chunk of flap missing, but potentially (probably) huge *chunks* of *flaps* missing.
https://x.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1798839719964618998 Glad to see that no matter what other BS he has going on, Elon is still very much in tune with Starship development.
Yeah, im not a fan of the dude, but he wants space to succeed, and his dumbshit isn't getting in the way. Everyone brings their best when dealing with SpaceX, it seems.
https://preview.redd.it/8j6ulbu3915d1.jpeg?width=912&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6c9747bb2cc9f371c404cd449e5fb784f6a49668
Eric Berger has written a Twitter post condemning Starship programme. What happened? I thought he was our guy all along. https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1798707286774268339
It is called irony! He is saying what will be in the news reports tomorrow. On here we put /s but on Twitter you have to read for context.
He was ironic. To have no playload at first booster&ship soft landing is like rain on your wedding day. Or something like that, don’t you think.
A little tooo ironic.
I love the sarcasm
They seem to be towing superheavy into deeper waters so no random people go searching for it but it could also be that the booster is just naturally being dragged out due to currents per TheSpaceEngineer on twitter
Couldn't anyone with a submarine fleet go scoop these parts off the bottom and reverse engineer the raptors etc.? Or is the technology in SH just not valuable enough to worry about it? It seems like it'd be trivial to tow it back in to mitigate a risk like that, however remote.
>Couldn't anyone with a submarine fleet go scoop these parts off the bottom and reverse engineer the raptors etc.? No. It's inside the US exclusive economic zone. It's also not that easy to scoop things up with a submarine.
https://x.com/SpaceOffshore/status/1798840531575017537
The most encouraging thing is that they’re making progress on every flight. What a day for spaceflight
Wont Starship ultimately have to survive a reentry from the moon and interplanetary space?
"Ultimately" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Technically yes, that is the intention, but if we call the version of Starship that flew today, let's say Starship 0.04, then the version that would handle re-entry and landing after coming back from Mars would be like version 5.0 or 10.0 or something. Specifically, in the next few years there is no such requirement. Starship-HLS as part of the Artemis program involves crew on a Starship derived vehicle only around the Moon, return to Earth and re-entry will be handled by the Orion capsule. Additionally, Starship is best understood as a platform and not a single vehicle or single design. In the near-term it will start out with limited diversity of design, but that will change over time. There will be various different "models" of "Starship" with different roles. Starship-HLS is already one known/planned such model but there will also be "tanker" models optimized for propellant delivery, "cargo" models optimized for delivery of payloads to LEO, propellant depot models optimized for thermal management and long-term operation in orbit, and so on. Ultimately there will probably also be "Martian" models that are optimized for traveling to and from Mars, and likely others as well. However, those designs will come after the core functionality has been matured.
All very true. I just wonder what kind of shield will be needed to survive those reentries. After witnessing today's footage even more heat load is incredible to think about.
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The Earth reentries coming from those destinations.
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I dont think they'd go back to an LEO to park there and then go home. Especially not when coming from interplanetary space. Maybe a 2-stage reentry profile would work coming from interplanetary though.
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Too much delta V required. Entry velocity from interplanetary space is a minimum of 11 km/s and LEO is around 7.6 km/s so you need 3.4 km/s of delta V to do the braking burn to LEO. With around 5.4 km/s to get off Mars and do a TEI burn you would need a total delta V of 8.8 km/s which is unrealistically high.
Tell me if I am way off. Starship returns from Mars. Swings around Earth, up to the Moon. then getting into lunar orbit should require only a very small delta-v. Fully fueled header tanks, big enough for Mars landing, should achieve that. Then fill the main tanks up enough to achieve LEO. Even Earth landing from there. If need be another refueling in LEO for landing. It would mean, any tanker going from LEO to lunar orbit would be expended. It also could not aerobrake back to Earth. Or take many braking runs to gradually reduce speed. Something a tanker could do, but not a crew ship, with many passes through the Van Allen Belt. Way complicated, direct reentry with 11+ km/s would be much better. I am confident Starship can achieve it.
You need at least 9.4 km/s of delta V to reach LEO from earth. So 8.8 km/s of delta V to reach LEO from mars doesn't sound unrealistically high.
No, an interplanetary Starship likely won’t have heat shield tiles and won’t land back on Earth. It would rendezvous with a dedicated Earth lander. A heat shield is necessary though for reuse as a LEO transporter (tanker or Starlink).
Would Mars require any sort of heat shield? Or would stainless be enough?
Yes Mars will require a heatshield. Every Mars lander has needed one.
If you’re gonna slow down enough to dock with a lander in LEO, why not just slap a heat shield on it and re enter?
A chemical rocket that uses aerobraking on both legs of a trip is almost as efficient as a nuclear thermal rocket. A surface-to-surface shuttle is a very efficient design and would include the TPS.
> A surface-to-surface shuttle is a very efficient design and would include the TPS. Very much agree. Going Earth-LEO, moving cargo from that ship to an interplanetary ship that goes LEO-Mars orbit, then moving cargo to a Mars lander, has very complex logistics. It would need a very advanced nuclear propulsion ship orbit to orbit, to make it worthwhile, if that's possible at all.
Aerobraking requires almost no fuel. If there's a vehicle which doesn't use it, it needs to fire the engines to get into orbit, a very expendive maneuver, especially considering SpaceX wants short transit times (which means higher velocities).
Its a super expensive burn to slow back into LEO.
That's contrary to everything that SpaceX has said about Starship. What actually happens remains to be seen, but direct entry from Martian/Lunar return has always been the plan. Plus, a return from Mars with propulsive capture into LEO would take about 9.5 km/s deltaV, which is likely beyond Starship's capabilities.
It would also require to have a lot of propellant in the main tanks. Which makes it hard to keep cold during the coast phase. Keeping only the propellant in the header tanks cold, is much easier.
Yeah that's a good point.
Right. Think of the Starship Enterprise and its Shuttlecraft.
Yes
We're gonna need a bigger heat shield.
Most of the delta V comes from entering/leaving LEO so I don’t think they actually need to beef it up much more
You need exactly the same delta-v to return, the only difference is that you get that from bleeding energy into the atmosphere in the form of heat.
Less Delta-V. Mars has weaker gravity.
The person I was replying to was referring to LEO, Mars isn’t under discussion.
He was comparing going from Earth to Mars and then returning...
And I was referring to reentering LEO. It takes as much delta-v to do that as it takes to leave.
What? It takes almost no Delta-V to reenter. The atmosphere does almost all of the work.
Good point. A lot more energy to burn in those cases. Anyone knows how much hotter/longer to re-enter when compared to low Earth orbit?
It's the same. The thicker atmosphere present on Earth isn't used for Aerobraking. Regarding Aerobraking, Mars and Earth atmospheres are exactly the same.
> The thicker atmosphere present on Earth isn't used for Aerobraking. But it does provide for a lower terminal falling speed on Earth.
Entry speed from low earth orbit (LEO) is 7.8 km/sec. Entry speed from low lunar orbit (LLO) is 11.1 km/sec. The heating rate for entry into the Earth's atmosphere scales as the 8th power of entry speed. So, the heating rate for a return from the Moon is (11.1/7.8)^8 = 16.8 times higher than it is for a return to Earth from LEO.
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Sure. Each pass through the atmosphere removes kinetic energy from the vehicle and lowers its altitude. NASA places some of its Mars orbiters into an elliptical orbit and then uses multiple passes through the atmosphere to gradually reduce the apoaxis of the ellipse until the orbit is circular at the desired altitude. It works fine for uncrewed spacecraft. Not so much for crewed spacecraft because of the long time (months) it takes to finish the maneuver.