SpaceX seems to have mastered the belly flop. Landing is getting there.
Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
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Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#22Congrats to SpaceX for sticking the landing. The most important launch of a reusable craft may be its second. Looking forward to SN10 flying again.
I doubt there's any plan to fly SN10 again. The point of this vehicle was to learn about controlling the flight with the flaps. The landing was a bonus, and reuse isn't part of the plan for the early prototypes (they already have several more in the pipeline, including SN11 which is pretty much ready to go) EDIT: I take that back... It did fly again...
> It did fly again...
One last time.
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#23Two of the three engines flaming out in the last few seconds, was that intentional? Something similar happened last time too, but at least this time it landed.
Yes, they can't throttle the engines down that much, so it turns them off once their thrust is no longer needed.
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#24This is a huge stepping stone to the world's first fully reusable orbital rocket. Incredibly exciting!
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#25It just blew up! Landing legs didn't deploy so it landed on its body, and fire suppression kicked in, but I guess there was a leak.
I haven't looked at the replays, but I do believe the landing legs did deploy. They're pretty short and stubby.
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#26Two of the three engines flaming out in the last few seconds, was that intentional? Something similar happened last time too, but at least this time it landed.
Yes. They need 1 to land - more than one means too much thrust.
Last time they only lit one, it failed to light, and boom. This time they lit all three hoping at least one would work, then turned off the ones they didn’t need.
I assume they had the idea independently of the guy who asked musk why they didn’t light more than one and shut down — musk replied “because we’re dumb”, but I guess that tweeter could claim to be a rocket scientist now.
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#27And it just popped :-D
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#28Two of the three engines flaming out in the last few seconds, was that intentional? Something similar happened last time too, but at least this time it landed.
This wasn't done for SN8 and SN9, where they only lit one engine. Musk said that this time around, they were going to light all three and then shut two off, thus providing some engine redundancy during the landing.
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#29SpaceX seems to have mastered the belly flop. Landing is getting there.
> seems to have mastered the belly flop
Seriously! They nailed that part on the first and every attempt. That by itself is pretty amazing.
Re: Live feed of Starship SN10 flight test [video]
#30NASA would have spent 2 trillion and 50 years to get to this stage. SpaceX's rapid iterations and fail fast methodology might save the human species