1000 km/h booster impact at sea, call that a "soft landing/splash down". Poor fishies :)
It does look like it came down rather fast. Engines only partially re-lit. About 34min in this video
Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
221–230 of 413 posts
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can launch payloads that bring in revenue while working on that problem. There is a good chance they put a bunch of Starlinks on the next flight.
Exactly, they’ve reached feature parity with large expendable launch systems so they can piggyback paying customers with a high risk threshold (starlink) on flights they’d be doing anyways. Given their cadence this phase won’t last long, they’ll likely achieve at least one successful landing next flight.
Yes this would all be true, if it were true. It is likely to become true at IFT-4 but they are very demonstrably not quite where you say they are.
This was still a suborbital flight and they cannot do much of anything that is commercially practical on suborbital flights (like launch satellites, even if they raise their apogee). They appear to have not had good control authority in coast and reentry. They did not do a relight/deorbit burn test that is likely an obstacle to tackle before they can make orbital flights. I assume we'll get some confirmation about these things soon enough, but please, you can be optimistic without being hasty.
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latest Soyuz revision is ~$50m per launch, it has a payload less than half of a Falcon 9 that lands on a droneship, and ~2/3rd of a Falcon 9 that returns to launch site. Making it twice the cost per kg. The highest flight rate it has ever achieved has been 2/month. It has a 96% success rate. The latest Falcon 9 revision is ~$67m per launch. Lately it flies every ~3 days. Over the past year it has flown ~100 times…
I don’t know what I’m talking about. Thanks for the info.
Props for replying
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#224So FAA cleared SpaceX and then within a few days they completed their launch pretty successfully by all accounts. So does that mean SpaceX could have launched a while back with no issues and were just waiting on the FAA? Did the FAA literally just slow down progress? Not a good look on the FAA, they should just let SpaceX do what it does at the speed they want. If they cannot add any value to this engagement, the lea…
When you're launching the largest and heaviest rocket ever made not running headlong into creating the biggest fuel air explosion is part of the regulatory agencies job. The first launch was pretty wildly out of control so everyone wants to make sure the rocket explodes when told if it doesn't go where it's supposed to.
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
99% chance that they lost attitude control hence couldn't point the business end towards wherever they wanted to. we know they can relight the engine on the booster and we know they can relight for landing burns. no surprise if the next launch has a couple pre-production big starlink birds.
On the contrary, they absolutely had attitude control. Otherwise reentry would have seen the ship tumbling out of control and quickly breaking up. Instead, SpaceX was able to begin a controlled reentry in the upright position, indicating nominal orientation performance.
I'd speculate one of main tank bulkheads breached and gas kept leaking from payload door which overpowered RCS. Then, during reentry, the vehicle briefly managed to regain attitude by aerodynamic forces on the flaps, but became north-northwest aligned and broke up.
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having those plasma views in livestream . It is incredible.
Yeah, in HD. It's sci-fi stuff.
Just like the first belly flop video.
The thirty seconds from 1:00 are unreal.
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
They can launch payloads that bring in revenue while working on that problem. There is a good chance they put a bunch of Starlinks on the next flight.
Exactly, they’ve reached feature parity with large expendable launch systems so they can piggyback paying customers with a high risk threshold (starlink) on flights they’d be doing anyways. Given their cadence this phase won’t last long, they’ll likely achieve at least one successful landing next flight.
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Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#228https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship_integrated_fli... Mission summary including timestamps
> Raptor in-space relight demo | No attempt
That was a big one to not attempt. Why didn't they attempt it?
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#229The test is essentially a success at this point. Starship can take payload to orbit and open/close the payload doors. The remaining things are icing on the cake. They can refine re-usability while flying payloads.
I wouldn’t classify the re-entry survival problem as icing. But otherwise, I agree with you.
Re-entry is icing because every other cargo rocket besides falcon, lands just like IFT3 lol
Re: Starship's Third Flight Test [video]
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wouldn’t classify the re-entry survival problem as icing. But otherwise, I agree with you.
They have a great pipeline for building ships. They want reusability, but for near-term needs like deploying bigger Starlink satellites and their moon lander contract they could probably power through without reentry survival. It would be expensive, but unlike in-orbit refueling not really mission critical
> but for near-term needs like deploying bigger Starlink satellites and their moon lander contract they could probably power through without reentry survival
Starlink sat deployment, probably. I’m not convinced on the moon lander contract though. Each mission requires the moon lander itself, plus a number of tanker launches to refuel the moon lander. I think it’s something like 8-15 tanker launches.
If each of those tanker launches is an expendable vehicle that’s… probably economically survivable, but definitely not sustainable.