SpaceX Starship test launch

[Herstal]

Excited to see it!

 

[smokingman]

Super heavy booster caught on reentry!!! Whoooo!!!!!!





Amazing moment in the history of space flight!
second feed...reentry of starship.
Just a screen capture from me...
You know cruising at 27,000 miles an hour into the atmosphere.


slowed down to 8000kmh

 

[Principal Skinr]

Just watching the replay now. WOW, what a machine!

 

[Route 45]

 

[Alamo]

This is amazing, and pure Elon.

 

[Principal Skinr]

So when Starship came down, where did it land and was the explosion upon landing expected or did it malfunction. It sounds to me from the commentary like it was expected....as if they just weren´t planning for that part of the flight regime to be tested yet....just do the landing all the way down to the water and safely let it crash and explode?

 

[Zephri]

So when Starship came down, where did it land and was the explosion upon landing expected or did it malfunction. It sounds to me from the commentary like it was expected....as if they just weren´t planning for that part of the flight regime to be tested yet....just do the landing all the way down to the water and safely let it crash and explode?

It tipped over and the tanks ruptured after landing, rockets don't like being on their side. The intent is to catch starship with the tower.

 

[Shadow01]

It was a water landing and it fell over after contact with the ocean. It wasn’t a full orbit back to texas

So when Starship came down, where did it land and was the explosion upon landing expected or did it malfunction. It sounds to me from the commentary like it was expected....as if they just weren´t planning for that part of the flight regime to be tested yet....just do the landing all the way down to the water and safely let it crash and explode?

 

[Shadow01]

This is amazing, and pure Elon.

The only thing to make that better would be a booster full flip then a catch.

 

[Alamo]

 

[Alamo]

So when Starship came down, where did it land and was the explosion upon landing expected or did it malfunction. It sounds to me from the commentary like it was expected....as if they just weren´t planning for that part of the flight regime to be tested yet....just do the landing all the way down to the water and safely let it crash and explode?

It landed as planned in the Indian Ocean.

More importantly, it landed within meters of its predicted/desired landing target. We know this because SpaceX had buoys with cameras on them surrounding the desired touchdown point, and at least one of them videoed the landing. I’ll try to find the clip. Additionally, as planned it appeared to be a very soft landing, i.e. it touched down in the water, stopped, and then just fell over, as opposed to crashing in the water and breaking up. Once landed it did fall over with fuel sloshing around and blew up, but that was expected and not really a negative.

On the previous IFT4 flight, part of at least one of the flaps partially burned through and this affected the trajectory, so the Starship landed about 6 km from its target and the only video of the touch down was from cameras on the Starship itself.

During IFT5 Starship reentry there did appear to be some burn through of the forward flaps, but much less than last time and it didn’t affect control enough to put Starship off course. Based on the burnthru the last time, SpaceX moved the position of the forward flaps on future starships, but the one used for IFT5 still had the old version. There is one more Starship in inventory with old-style flaps but I’ll bet that SpaceX scraps it or uses it for ground testing. Elon is not one for trying to salvage sunk costs.

 

[Alamo]

More

 

[Alamo]

This is a clip of the real-time live broadcast of Starship landing from SpaceX.

Indian Ocean is on theother side of the world, so it is night there and only light is from the Starship engine exhaust. But you can clearly see the ocean surface approach and stop, and then Starship starts to fall over. At last moment the POV switches to the buoy and captures the subsequent explosion.

I hope SpaceX releases all the video from the buoy.

 

[tsm]

More

Would have been fascinating to have been in the meeting where someone came up with “catch the booster.” Just imagine the discussion: “Sure Ted, you’re going to fly a 200’ multi-ton flaming booster through a couple of metal arms which will then close and catch it in mid-air! What have you been smoking, or is this a ‘hold my beer’ moment?”

But damned if they didn’t do it! Guess this is what happens when government thinking stops and entrepreneurship takes over.

 

[Alamo]

Would have been fascinating to have been in the meeting where someone came up with “catch the booster.”

Tom Mueller was with SpaceX from the beginning thru mid teens. He was VP for Propulsion, and among many other things designed and built the reusable Merlin engines for Falcon 1/5/9, and also the thrusters on Dragon (which work, unlike Boeing’s thrusters on Starliner).

He’s with another company now, Impulse. He eventually got worn out with the pace at SpaceX.

 

[Herstal]

Would have been fascinating to have been in the meeting where someone came up with “catch the booster.” Just imagine the discussion: “Sure Ted, you’re going to fly a 200’ multi-ton flaming booster through a couple of metal arms which will then close and catch it in mid-air! What have you been smoking, or is this a ‘hold my beer’ moment?”

But damned if they didn’t do it! Guess this is what happens when government thinking stops and entrepreneurship takes over.

Elon has talked a number of times about a couple of ways of thinking about problems that can lead to ideas like that, notably thinking from First Principles (E.g. what is known with certainty) and working from there, and then ideas like "the best part is no part". So if from first Principles you think, every pound of weight the booster weighs that isn't payload or fuel is a pound of weight we aren't putting into orbit, so how do we remove that. With F9 the legs are a non-zero amount of parasitic mass and so being able to offload that weight to the tower ("stage zero") improves how much weight they can take to orbit.

I imagine next flight they'll orbit the ship for at least a few laps, maybe try the payload doors again. I suspect they won't try to catch a ship until the 2nd tower is done, but maybe if they get comfortable at leaving the ship in orbit for a few days while they clear the booster from the current tower.

 

[Herstal]

Tom Mueller was with SpaceX from the beginning thru mid teens. He was VP for Propulsion, and among many other things designed and built the reusable Merlin engines for Falcon 1/5/9, and also the thrusters on Dragon (which work, unlike Boeing’s thrusters on Starliner).

He’s with another company now, Impulse. He eventually got worn out with the pace at SpaceX.

He also has an amazing car collection.

He actually founded Impulse space and is working in a niche that will pair up well with SpaceX (and Blue Origin or anyone else who actually gets mass to orbit)

 

[Alamo]

 

[Principal Skinr]

It tipped over and the tanks ruptured after landing, rockets don't like being on their side. The intent is to catch starship with the tower.

Was it at the tower? I swore they said it landed in the water. I saw the booster land and be captured with the tower.

 

[Principal Skinr]

It landed as planned in the Indian Ocean.

More importantly, it landed within meters of its predicted/desired landing target. We know this because SpaceX had buoys with cameras on them surrounding the desired touchdown point, and at least one of them videoed the landing. I’ll try to find the clip. Additionally, as planned it appeared to be a very soft landing, i.e. it touched down in the water, stopped, and then just fell over, as opposed to crashing in the water and breaking up. Once landed it did fall over with fuel sloshing around and blew up, but that was expected and not really a negative.

On the previous IFT4 flight, part of at least one of the flaps partially burned through and this affected the trajectory, so the Starship landed about 6 km from its target and the only video of the touch down was from cameras on the Starship itself.

During IFT5 Starship reentry there did appear to be some burn through of the forward flaps, but much less than last time and it didn’t affect control enough to put Starship off course. Based on the burnthru the last time, SpaceX moved the position of the forward flaps on future starships, but the one used for IFT5 still had the old version. There is one more Starship in inventory with old-style flaps but I’ll bet that SpaceX scraps it or uses it for ground testing. Elon is not one for trying to salvage sunk costs.

Got it. That makes sense now. Thanks!