Space and Science BS Thread

Nice, I was getting an impression of “this isn’t working” during reentry but that demonstrates it more obviously. Still might be preplanned even if execution is lacking. Given the size of the tanks relative to the ship in comparison to the on board shuttle tanks I could see the body of the ship having more of a tendency to rotate around the mass of the fuel but not to that extreme.

 

Spacex confirmed the relight was nixed due to excessive roll rate. They were able to complete the fuel transfer and while the video showed the pez door sticking they said it did end up getting closed. Chaff is definitely not all (if any)ice chunks and one was recognizable as a hexagon(45:10) so still some work to be done there.

 

https://x.com/theoldmanpar/status/1768688086219710659?s=46

 

I don't have any intel on this, just my thoughts, I think you will see Starship at 37 before you see it at 39A. The Starship tower at 39A is extremely close to Saturn causeway and Beach Road. A major anomaly there would sever NASA's northern access point to the Air Force side. I see why Elon wants 37 after ULA is done with it. It's way out on it's own.

Elon has reinvented water...

 

That is GOOD!!! Thanks for doing it.

 

I’m just passing along stuff of interest

 

Courtesy of SpaceX:

 

They need to finish at Massey’s so they can shift all ship testing there along with booster cryo. They need to finish the Star Factory to crank up production, the parking garage and office building for all the people making and running the operation. From IFT-2 to IFT-3 was ~ 4 months but the mishap report took most of that time to prepare. That time isn’t predictable but one hopes that each flight test leads to fewer changes and none too radical so that the time between test flights continues to drop. They’ll keep messing with the tiles but I don’t see that holding up the show until it actually prevents the next stage of the testing(can’t do a landing burn if it’s already burnt) but the can certainly deploy Starlinks from expended ships until it’s solved. I’d love to see the next launch @ Memorial Day.

 

Neither ship blew up That should help quicken the incident report.

Too bad we don’t have the specific flight plan but we do know some things that were not part if it:
1) The boosters failure to relight the Raptors;
2) The Starships:
A. Roll
B. Funky Pez dispenser door
C. Constant venting of propellant/oxidizer (I haven’t heard anyone mention this but there was a plume throughout the flight)
D. Shedding of tiles and other bits

It’s gonna be interesting to compare reports between these flights

Also, I’d be surprised if they didn’t put a payload of the big ass Starlinks on the next flight. That will really supercharge the whole network.

 

I thought they said the booster blew just before it hit water. It wasn’t FTS because that had already been safed. I would add attitude control to roll since it was more of a cannonball than a bellyflop but amazing to get that view nonetheless. I’d also be curious if there was any more interior footage from reentry.

 

Huh, I hadn't heard the Booster blew up... well that might add a few weeks to the investigation.

Interior shots of reentery would be amazing!

 

Third hand but Marcus House mentioned that Spacex revealed on X that B10 exploded 400 and some feet above the water. I don’t do X but he showed a copy of the tweet so take that with however much salt suits your taste. We can hope they can identify causes and solutions rapidly but I’m sure it’s not always simple and might include some internal discussions and debates. Still, they’ve proven they can do it much faster than others even if it’s not immediately. There wasn’t any roll early on after SECO so I wonder if something in the propellant transfer or Pez door excercises induced it. A question I also have is that would a deorbit burn have resulted in the ship going significantly slower at reentry than it was by not quite reaching orbital velocity? Was the single engine relight test supposed to make up in some way for that? Probably doesn’t matter since it seems to have been misaligned for reentry anyway and already doomed. Each bit of progress reveals more areas where they make improvements but only enough to get another step and don’t know the steps until they trip over them. Not surprising considering just how much different SH is from anything ever attempted.

 

Scott Manley and Terran Space Academy both seem to put the loss of attitude control on inadequate vector control thrusters that just use ulage rather than high isp hypergolic thrusters and undersized at that. Also, could the propellant transfer have contributed to the ship being out of balance fore & aft since it was shifted out of the header tank and into the main tank? I thought the reason for the placement of the header tank in the nose was to counterbalance the weight of the engines.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8htMpR7mnaM

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxb1ySJZ0sA

 

Or might be a new pad SLC-50 between SLC-37 and SLC-40. ~12:15 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c-9elAg4gSw

 

https://x.com/ase_astronauts/status/1769363290751197461?s=46

 

Hmmm. I hadn't thought about 37....

How does the water taste?

 

Nasa has said publicly at least in my circles that X is not proceeding towards the aforementioned SLC 50, meaning to me they(Nasa) are confident the environmental study the Air Force is doing for Starship to 37 will allow it.
The water is incredible honestly.

 

has anyone reported on the aftermath of Stage 0 yet? Would love to see how all of the upgrades since the previous launch held up.

 

I’m thinking the next launch will have some weight in the payload bay(mimicking an empty Pez dispenser?) whether any get deployed or not and the header tanks stay full.
The door mechanism looked flimsy and allowed the door to flex and jam. I’m guessing they don’t send it up with more than a few Starlinks until the door works. It’s one thing to sacrifice a ship knowing you have to but another to lose a full load of satellites as well.
It would not surprise me to find out they were already working on upgrading the TVC system or planned to once they had hard data on the requirements.

 

No more than a brief set of ground shots by NSF. Looked like the dance floor was getting reinstalled but no obvious damage other than paint. I expect there’ll be some issues going forward until they get the entire system dialed in with finalized materials as well as designs. If they anticipate having 2 months or more to turn around the report and necessary changes I would expect them to use it, either before or after(maybe both) getting B11 spun and fired. There’s still more work to be done on the tank farm as well. If the changes in the report aren’t significant re the ship and booster then I’d look to see B12 and S30 complete testing before the next launch. Maybe by the time that pair launches (late July?) the flame trench and stand will be ready and they can begin demo of Pad B and it’s associated tanks/plumbing. That still seems optimistic to me given it has both deluge and all cryo fluid connections to mount and run lines for and much of the foundation work is still sequential.
Does anyone know where and how they test the TVC thrusters? Since they were continuously bleeding LOX did they vent too much for the thrusters to remain effective?