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SpaceX Starship - IFT-3 - Starbase TX - Pre-Launch Preparations Thread
- Thread starter VIKING26
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It's a big...maybe.
What a frigging waste of time !!
I looked at the starbasestatus.com website yesterday morning and no closure was indicated. Drove all the way from Dallas to Boca Chica, only to be turned away a few miles before Starbase by a rent-a-cop by around 3:30 pm. I showed him the website where it did not mention that it will be closed. He didn't care. There were many who were allowed to go. But those were people who I think lived in Boca Chica village or contractors who worked at Starbase.
Since it was closed today also, I didn't bother staying there overnight, returned to Dallas staying overnight at Austin. On the plus side, my Model Y performed flawlessly over this 1200 miles. All SpCs worked great with very little occupancy.
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No static fire today. Partial tanking, a long hold, then eventually detanking and depress. The alternate date for today's closure is tomorrow, but we'll have to wait and see if they try again tomorrow. There is also a possible closure for Wednesday the 27th.
Wow, that was a very long hold today. I assume SpaceX was trying very hard to correct an issue that they thought could be correctable within the available window, but were not successful.
Here's a slightly more readable version. For those not familiar, these things can be seen at the bottom of the Cameron County SpaceX page.
Right now, there's some venting going on at the tank farm, but the road is open. I'm assuming that nothing will happen and that they're just doing some valve testing or some such thing.
Seems like a reasonable guess; today is some type of GSE testing to resolve the issue they had yesterday that prevented the static fire.
Today's road closure is cancelled, but the tank farm is venting. It looks like they needed to do some basic testing of ground support equipment before trying anything as ambitious as a static fire.
There is a road and beach closure on the 29th from 6am to 4pm CST. Backup dates January 3rd and 4th.
There is a road and beach closure on the 29th from 6am to 4pm CST. Backup dates January 3rd and 4th.
Both Starship and the booster had a static fire today. The booster definitely had a full 33 engine test. The Starship didn't look like a six engine test.
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Starship may have been single engine reentry burn from header tanks.
That's a surprisingly-long burn directly onto Fondag, even for one engine. Does anyone else think that it might have been that long so that they could start from the header tanks and transition to the main tanks?
Great video.
Has anyone heard an explanation for why the exhaust goes from white to brown? I just checked IFT-2 and it did the same thing prior to liftoff.
Maybe? Might be the length needed to validate ullage system.
Now that I reread, SpaceX didn't say if it was a header tank test...
White is steaming the deluge water (which starts with a surplus), brown is when the exhaust flow vaporizers all the water and makes it past the concrete to the soil and whips it up.
SpaceX is dialing in on control. Each booster and Starship feels more and more "flight ready." The Raptors and supportive plumbing are getting more Falcon-like in their dependability. It feels like they are at the point where Falcon 9 was at their third launch back in 2012.
The static fires:
The static fires:
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EldestOyster
Member
With any suborbital trajectory, including "almost orbit", as soon as the engines are off, the ship is in free-fall. A microgravity environment should persist until the upper atmosphere starts pushing back. Three-fourths of an orbit gives you about an hour to try stuff.
Educated guess, anyway.
SpaceX targets February for third Starship test flight
SpaceX expects to conduct the third integrated test flight of its Starship vehicle in February as it works to demonstrate landing humans on the moon.
spacenews.com
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