Ongoing SpaceX Thread

[Dan02]

New starship launch today.

Amazing watching the booster return, punch through the clouds at lightning speed then the next thing you know it was hovering over the ocean. One engine failed on ascent and one exploded spectacularly during the landing burn.

Next up starship re-entry in about 30 minutes.

[Bigtime]

Solid "hold" music playing on the feed right now too.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Oh wtf!? Thanks for the heads up!

[photon]

Pretty cool view as the atmosphere burns one of the flaps off lol.

But they're still getting data, so it hasn't come apart.

[Bigtime]

Holy crap, the little flap that could held on right until the end. Even looks like they got the landing burn!

[Dan02]

Wow despite the flap looking like it was going to disintegrate at any second it looks like the ship actually did a soft landing in the ocean.

[Scroopy Noopers]

I’ve never been more excited to see an inanimate object show signs of life as I was when that flap moved.

[photon]

I guess we'll see if they think the burn through at the flap was due to the tiles they left off intentionally or if it's a design issue. I've always thought it'd be super difficult to insulate a moving part like that that's directly in the path of reentry.

Interesting stuff.

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by photon

I guess we'll see if they think the burn through at the flap was due to the tiles they left off intentionally or if it's a design issue. I've always thought it'd be super difficult to insulate a moving part like that that's directly in the path of reentry.

Interesting stuff.

The tiles they left off were on the skirt around the engine bay not near the flaps.

[Dan02]

On the next version of starship they're moving the flaps further to the leeward side of the rocket, might help.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Dan02

The tiles they left off were on the skirt around the engine bay not near the flaps.

Yeah, though I thought you could see some venting right near where the tiles stopped forward of the flaps on the body, so maybe the plasma burned through the skirt then found its way inside and compromised the base of the flaps?

Moving them up makes sense; the control surfaces can move in and out of the airflow as needed but the base where there's gaps is more hidden.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by photon

I guess we'll see if they think the burn through at the flap was due to the tiles they left off intentionally or if it's a design issue. I've always thought it'd be super difficult to insulate a moving part like that that's directly in the path of reentry.

Interesting stuff.

The fins look like they had a kind of honeycomb structure coated in carbon fibre. But I would have thought carbon fibre couldn't handle the prolonged high temps. And their is no way I'm smarter than these people, they are literally rocket scientists. So I'm curious what they used, and why they thought it would survive.

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by photon

Yeah, though I thought you could see some venting right near where the tiles stopped forward of the flaps on the body, so maybe the plasma burned through the skirt then found its way inside and compromised the base of the flaps?

Moving them up makes sense; the control surfaces can move in and out of the airflow as needed but the base where there's gaps is more hidden.

The flap we were watching was one on the nose end of the vehicle so opposite end from where the tiles were left off.

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The fins look like they had a kind of honeycomb structure coated in carbon fibre. But I would have thought carbon fibre couldn't handle the prolonged high temps. And their is no way I'm smarter than these people, they are literally rocket scientists. So I'm curious what they used, and why they thought it would survive.

They're made of of stainless steel with ceramic heat shield tiles. It looks like by the end of it the fin survived after shedding all its head shield tiles.

[Bigtime]

Cool:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1799458854067118450

[photon]

Makes sense that they'd get that down pretty fast given how much experience they have with that already. Really want to see it caught by the mech arms lol.

[Coach]

Very glad I watched this live. SpaceX does it right from a media perspective and making sure they have great camera views of the stages. That launch looked insane from the drone.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Cool:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1799458854067118450

Take that Gulf of Mexico!! Thats what you get!

[Dan02]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Cool:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1799458854067118450

I wonder how similar that was to the landing profile needed for the catch.

Can definitely see which raptor went ka-boom in the video.

[photon]

SpaceX caught the booster with the chopsticks on their first try.. that's pretty impressive.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1845468649743855822

Seems the ship also survived reentry and gently landed on the ocean.

EDIT: Good videos: https://youtu.be/YC87WmFN_As?t=12573