Space and Science BS Thread

On board camera for hot staging

 

Anyone else loving the jazz music they have going on?

 

Pretty amazing they were able to get video that late.

 

I hate when work gets in the way of these things….
Amazing improvement

Spoiler: Don’t read if you don’t want to know

despite loss of both vehicles. The brief clip of the booster attempting to maintain control was wild. Missed out on the entry clip of starship. Thank goodness for YT!!

 

https://x.com/spacex/status/1768279990368612354?s=46

 

Seemed like tiles or something else was flying off like chaff.

 

That was cool.

 

Wonder if the speed data was actual or projected--i.e. was the ship lost at video drop out or just not enough bandwidth for video during interval.

 

They were saying that video was hardest to maintain and more easily lost than other lower bandwidth telemetry but they were awfully quick to switch to what “had already been accomplished” which leads me to think it was an abruptly done deal.

 

The broadcast said they lost Starlink and TDRSS downlink at the same time so I took that to mean it blew apart in a quick second.

 

https://x.com/gwynne_shotwell/status/1768291595160605109?s=46

In case you can get into the X link:

 

Kind of a funky plume with that jet sticking out to the right (and the smaller ones). That big one was there during ascent.
https://x.com/jameslucasit/status/1768285408519917657?s=46

 

Any video showing time stamped orbital tracking data(actual flight path and how far along it reached)?
Onboard video showed the ship slowly rotating so I wonder if that played into the ship engines not relighting. Also I would think they would correct that spin prior to reentry or at least attempt to. If it’s autonomous then that’s some more code they’ll have to add or correct. Still, it’s impressive that each flight test gets farther so I’m hoping the next one both stages get wet before they come apart and they resolve the relighting issues.

 

Did you catch the clip of the booster grid fins frantically trying to find stability? It was brief but it was clear it wasn’t gonna find it..

On the Starship reentry, it looked to roll to port (if we were looking towards the front) based on the plasma stream. I was half expecting it to start to break up on camera.

 

Yeah, that was interesting to watch. it was like things were going all fine, right up until it decided that nope, this ain't happening.

 

You’ve got both methane and O2 venting from both stages so it’s possible those plumes could affect the exhaust plume where they meet. I’d wondered the previous launch if that might be the cause of what seemed to me to be an uneven distribution of soot. Also, any leakage being flushed by the CO2 might do the same thing anywhere around the perimeter.

 

Yeah, I instantly thought of a cartoon character flapping non-existent wings. Might be a case where the programming was expecting to be making small corrections for a burn that wasn’t happening so instead of having engine gymballing doing the lions share …

 

I'm pretending that was ice chunks.

I still say this is the CO2 fire supression...

 

Also, didn’t it take about 5 years from the first successful Falcon 9 launch to get the control and accuracy to the point they could target a landing? I expect this will progress much faster but they also need a finer degree of control.

 

Lon on the NSF stream said that was "barbequing" the ship so it warmed up evenly from the sun.