Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
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Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
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Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#2The internet is weirdly quiet about this achievement
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#3The internet is weirdly quiet about this achievement
Yet one flap is going to be eternal in human memory
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#4The internet is weirdly quiet about this achievement
depends on your bubble.
my X is full of leaking flaps.
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#5Has SpaceX shared plans on where Starship goes from here? Other than the minor hiccups (a couple of engine misfires; a damaged flap), this looked like a wildly successful test. I'm especially curious to know when they'll start successfully recovering the booster and Starship.
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#6If you haven't seen the video yet... it's amazing. The re-entry in particular had amazing footage. Looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#7Has SpaceX shared plans on where Starship goes from here? Other than the minor hiccups (a couple of engine misfires; a damaged flap), this looked like a wildly successful test. I'm especially curious to know when they'll start successfully recovering the booster and Starship.
The engine failure was minor, true. That's the design point: if engines have a firm ceiling to reliability it's better to design so that one or two can fail than to put all the eggs in a basket. And indeed, the 32/33 engine set was enough to hit the trajectory targets, so that worked great.
But I don't think you can characterize a burned-through flap as minor. Once there's a hole in something like that, the fact that it remains aerodynamically usable is just dumb luck. Clearly the heat shielding failed. If this were a production craft you'd probably have to scrap it even if you recovered it successfully, defeating the whole point to having it be reusable in the first place. The shielding folks have work to do.
But at the same time, the telemetry and control folks are popping champagne. Their stuff worked magically. We literally had live video (albeit through a cracked lens from all the flap debris) all the way through reentry to spashdown, and the landing maneuver looks to have worked perfectly.
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#8If you haven't seen the video yet... it's amazing. The re-entry in particular had amazing footage. Looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Could you provide a link?
Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#9Re: Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
#10Has SpaceX shared plans on where Starship goes from here? Other than the minor hiccups (a couple of engine misfires; a damaged flap), this looked like a wildly successful test. I'm especially curious to know when they'll start successfully recovering the booster and Starship.
Def super successful. Crazy how the flaps held given how they seemed to disintegrate on re entry. They said they’d try and catch the booster for flight 5 if the booster splashed down successfully this time and it did so fingers crossed. That’ll be a pretty wild thing to see. Could happen soon too. Next flight might be within about a month.