SpaceX (Vol. 2)

[Eric Mc]

Three down. I think it will take at least another three flights before they manage to achieve all the fundamnetal requirements of the design at this rate.

[Caruso]

MiniMan64 said:

So what’s the fourth iteration going to be?

Get it up there and then stick the landing on both coming back down?

I would guess controlled water landings for both maybe? The Superheavy booster was quite close in terms of speed to a controlled landing - speed down to 1100 km/h when it seems to develop some severe oscillations and the landing burn failed. Not sure which caused which there - did the oscillations prevent the engines lighting or the unevenly lit engines caused the oscillations?

Starship was 25700 km/h when signal was lost so a bigger gap to close in terms of flight regimes, although they have already stuck a landing from subsonic speeds which took quite a few iterations to succeed.

[RustyMX5]

Eric Mc said:

Three down. I think it will take at least another three flights before they manage to achieve all the fundamnetal requirements of the design at this rate.

Two weeks then

[CraigyMc]

Caruso said:

MiniMan64 said:

So what’s the fourth iteration going to be?

Get it up there and then stick the landing on both coming back down?

I would guess controlled water landings for both maybe? The Superheavy booster was quite close in terms of speed to a controlled landing - speed down to 1100 km/h when it seems to develop some severe oscillations and the landing burn failed. Not sure which caused which there - did the oscillations prevent the engines lighting or the unevenly lit engines caused the oscillations?

Starship was 25700 km/h when signal was lost so a bigger gap to close in terms of flight regimes, although they have already stuck a landing from subsonic speeds which took quite a few iterations to succeed.

They need both Booster and Ship to stop leaking propellant from near the rockets for starters. I think it's a likely ause of Booster not refiring for the "landing". For Ship, today was the first real test of the tiles. It made it further than I expected, but it still wasn't near the max thermal reentry phase when comms were lost/ship turned into a meteorite.

I think hover-landing into the sea for booster and "flip at last second" landing into the sea for Ship would be a great next step for each part, but clearly the next thing they want from Ship is for reentry to work.

Booster's nearly there with the landing bit, remarkably.

[Eric Mc]

They have a LOT of things to sort out.

I'm sure they'll do it but it's a long way from operational yet.

[RacerMike]

Eric Mc said:

They have a LOT of things to sort out.

I'm sure they'll do it but it's a long way from operational yet.

You’d say that only 2 launches ago and yet here we are less than a year later with a ship that made it to orbit!

[normalbloke]

RacerMike said:

Eric Mc said:

They have a LOT of things to sort out.

I'm sure they'll do it but it's a long way from operational yet.

You’d say that only 2 launches ago and yet here we are less than a year later with a ship that made it to orbit!

I think solving the re-entry temps is going to take them a lot longer than they realise at this point.

[dxg]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8htMpR7mnaM

[annodomini2]

RacerMike said:

You’d say that only 2 launches ago and yet here we are less than a year later with a ship that made it to orbit!

Almost, not quite, but that was intentional.

[annodomini2]

Eric Mc said:

They have a LOT of things to sort out.

I'm sure they'll do it but it's a long way from operational yet.

I think they'll stick something to deploy on the next one, 5-10 Starlink V2s would be my guess.

[annodomini2]

Caruso said:

would guess controlled water landings for both maybe? The Superheavy booster was quite close in terms of speed to a controlled landing - speed down to 1100 km/h when it seems to develop some severe oscillations and the landing burn failed. Not sure which caused which there - did the oscillations prevent the engines lighting or the unevenly lit engines caused the oscillations?

Starship was 25700 km/h when signal was lost so a bigger gap to close in terms of flight regimes, although they have already stuck a landing from subsonic speeds which took quite a few iterations to succeed.

Something exploded on the booster during engine re-light, there was bits of metal flying everywhere and only one engine re-lit according to the telemetry.

[CraigyMc]

annodomini2 said:

Caruso said:

would guess controlled water landings for both maybe? The Superheavy booster was quite close in terms of speed to a controlled landing - speed down to 1100 km/h when it seems to develop some severe oscillations and the landing burn failed. Not sure which caused which there - did the oscillations prevent the engines lighting or the unevenly lit engines caused the oscillations?

Starship was 25700 km/h when signal was lost so a bigger gap to close in terms of flight regimes, although they have already stuck a landing from subsonic speeds which took quite a few iterations to succeed.

Something exploded on the booster during engine re-light, there was bits of metal flying everywhere and only one engine re-lit according to the telemetry.

3, although 2 then shut back down.

Edited to add: these. Unfortunately, the initial decel is supposed to be all the inner engines, all 13 of them. It's why the booster went in like a lawn dart.


I also note that the booster was really low on LO2 at engine restart. Maybe it leaked enough that it couldn't do a proper engine restart, there was 3x as much methane as oxidiser at the end.

Edited by CraigyMc on Thursday 14th March 19:41

[Simpo Two]

Eric Mc said:

They have a LOT of things to sort out.

I'm sure they'll do it but it's a long way from operational yet.

And certainly with 100 people on board, which is apparently what it can carry

But the good news is that it actually made first item on the TV news, as opposed to the usual interminable ste about politics and the Duchess of Wales's photos.

[annodomini2]

MiniMan64 said:

So what’s the fourth iteration going to be?

Get it up there and then stick the landing on both coming back down?

They didn't complete the in space ship engine ignition test, so money would be on same as IFT 3, less the fuel transfer test.

[annodomini2]

CraigyMc said:

annodomini2 said:

Caruso said:

would guess controlled water landings for both maybe? The Superheavy booster was quite close in terms of speed to a controlled landing - speed down to 1100 km/h when it seems to develop some severe oscillations and the landing burn failed. Not sure which caused which there - did the oscillations prevent the engines lighting or the unevenly lit engines caused the oscillations?

Starship was 25700 km/h when signal was lost so a bigger gap to close in terms of flight regimes, although they have already stuck a landing from subsonic speeds which took quite a few iterations to succeed.

Something exploded on the booster during engine re-light, there was bits of metal flying everywhere and only one engine re-lit according to the telemetry.

3, although 2 then shut back down.

Edited to add: these. Unfortunately, the initial decel is supposed to be all the inner engines, all 13 of them. It's why the booster went in like a lawn dart.


I also note that the booster was really low on LO2 at engine restart. Maybe it leaked enough that it couldn't do a proper engine restart, there was 3x as much methane as oxidiser at the end.

Edited by CraigyMc on Thursday 14th March 19:41

Landing burn should be done from the "header tank" (even though it's at the bottom of the Booster), depends if the gauge measures both or just 1.

[Beati Dogu]

It's SpaceX's 22nd birthday today as well. That was quite a candle they lit for it.




Posted on X by SpaceX President & COO Gwynne Shotwell:

Happy birthday to @SpaceX ! What a day!

HUGE congratulations to the entire team for this incredible day: clean count (glad the shrimpers could get out in the nick of time!), liftoff, hot staging, Super Heavy boost back and coast (and likely a couple engines making mainstage during landing burn!), clean ship ”insertion” and coast, payload door cycling and prop transfer demo (to be confirmed!), and ship entry!"


NASA Technology also posted about the fuel transfer test:

"Cryogenic fluid technologies are critical for human missions to the Moon and Mars and our future exploration goals. Today, during the Starship test flight, we worked with @SpaceX to demonstrate a liquid oxygen propellant transfer. Teams are reviewing flight data to learn how it went."

Edited by Beati Dogu on Thursday 14th March 21:18

[Eric Mc]

normalbloke said:

I think solving the re-entry temps is going to take them a lot longer than they realise at this point.

Agreed.
Apart from the instability before and during re-entry, it was shedding tiles like confetti.
Even if it had re-entered in the right attitude it’s likely that it would not have survived.
There also seemed to be a problem with gases in the cargo bay and the bay door looked like it didn’t close properly.

[Ian974]

Some amazing footage from that, just two launches ago getting off the pad was seen as a significant step and even the pad was getting blasted to pieces!
Worth remembering the issues they had with landing the falcon boosters and how ridiculous even attempting that seemed at the time. Seems absolutely routine now.
With how ridiculously ambitious this project is, volume building will again be massively useful in learning and trialling fixes. Can't wait to see how this is all going to progress!

Edited by Ian974 on Thursday 14th March 23:57

[Dark85]

Eric Mc said:

Three down. I think it will take at least another three flights before they manage to achieve all the fundamnetal requirements of the design at this rate.

I think 6 total test flights to get it working would be pretty decent going with the model they are using; falcon 9's landing took more than that - honestly this seems like nothing but positives to me, not spectacular leap forward but an incremental step reasonably in line with expectations.

And that re-entry footage with the plasma on the heatshield was utterly awesome.

[Eric Mc]

They are good at getting great pictures back.