SpaceX Starship - IFT-4 - Starbase TX - Launch Thread and Post Launch Discussion

[Grendal]

When you said "third hand" I think I got something in my eye..

Or, as a famous science fiction writing team called it, the "Gripping Hand."

 

[ecarfan]

Made this screen grab; it looks like two engines are out? When I was watching the livestream earlier today I thought only one engine was out during ascent.

 

[Grendal]

Made this screen grab; it looks like two engines are out?

View attachment 1054165

I think it's a play of light or clouding in the moment. The SpaceX feed seems pretty accurate on engine out situations. It showed only the one out all the way to stage separation.

 

[ggies07]

hahaha. This is hilarious.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1798745841836110239

 

[TunaBug]

Or, as a famous science fiction writing team called it, the "Gripping Hand."

That's what I though of.

An old PM and I used to use "gripping hand" in a team at Microsoft. There are some old specs, design docs, and probably even source code with that, but I'm sure long since abandoned. Several people in that group were fresh into the country and American idioms and thought it was yet another typical but bizarre American idiom and used it as such. Even after the team split up, years later somebody would hunt me down and ask "People think I'm weird, wtf is a gripping hand?"

 

[Grendal]

And first up for a breakdown: Scott Manley:

 

[ecarfan]

Was just going to post that. Scott was as boggled as the rest of us were watching that flap continue to function and the control software adapt and manage to still produce a soft touchdown.

 

[JB47394]

Or, as a famous science fiction writing team called it, the "Gripping Hand."

I was going to write that, but I'm not geeky enough to do it in public.

Made this screen grab; it looks like two engines are out? When I was watching the livestream earlier today I thought only one engine was out during ascent.

I think it's an engine running at low thrust combined with the viewing angle. Here's the view from the SpaceX feed. Notice the engine roughly opposite the one that's out. It's definitely darker, but also definitely running.

 

[zoomer0056]

I prefer to watch the SpaceX feed live, then go back and watch the YouTubers on replay. They will contribute a running commentary that can point out things that you might not notice, and which SpaceX wouldn't speculate on publicly during the launch.

I watch Space Affairs live on the big screen and watch NSF live on the little screen.

 

[kabin]

It looked like the team quickly halted the video stream as the rocket began tipping over after touchdown on the landing pad. The instrumentation clearly showed it was on its side.

 

[Electroman]

We know the speed was close to zero, but do we also know if the Ship hit the water in vertical orientation?

 

[JB47394]

We know the speed was close to zero, but do we also know if the Ship hit the water in vertical orientation?

In looking at the video, it seems to me that the vehicle hit the water upright at 15 km/h, bounced back up, then fell over. The drop from 15 to 2 km/h happens very suddenly, and there appears to be a splash at the 15 km/h mark. Certainly the vehicle telemetry indicates a vertical orientation until the vehicle reaches its minimum speed.

 

[15Peter20]

It looked like the team quickly halted the video stream as the rocket began tipping over after touchdown on the landing pad. The instrumentation clearly showed it was on its side.

The landing pad was the ocean.

 

[Grendal]

In looking at the video, it seems to me that the vehicle hit the water upright at 15 km/h, bounced back up, then fell over. The drop from 15 to 2 km/h happens very suddenly, and there appears to be a splash at the 15 km/h mark. Certainly the vehicle telemetry indicates a vertical orientation until the vehicle reaches its minimum speed.

My WAG is that the telemetry started giving faulty data toward the 10 km altitude mark. The on screen numbers did not match with what the flight controller was saying. There is often a few seconds delay between the two but there was a big delay (more than ten seconds) from on screen information to flight controller making call outs. The flight controller seemed a lot more accurate. The on screen information said Starship was at 0 km altitude when the engine controller said the landing burn had begun. We could see the burn begin and the speed dropped very quickly while the screen continued to say 0 km. Then she says the landing burn halted just as the burning visual ended. Which was at least fifteen seconds after the on screen data said it was at 0 km. I think it is very clear when the ship hit the water. You can see water and waves for a moment. What the orientation was exactly is very hard to determine but it was somewhere close to vertical. JMHO.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Is it possible that a future version of Starship will only be Stainless steel and minimal tiles?

Like a thin layer of tiles and steel plates on top of it? The steel might ablate, but that is very easy to replace.

Steel is heavy, tiles are light. They want to use tiles as much as possible for this reason.

 

[kabin]

The landing pad was the ocean.

There's more to it than that. One of the three engines disabled slightly before the other two. Timber!

 

[Favguy]

Does anyone know if they will be recovering the ship from the ocean to do a post-mortem on it? Would be interesting to see just how intact the control flaps remained.

 

[zoomer0056]

Does anyone know if they will be recovering the ship from the ocean to do a post-mortem on it? Would be interesting to see just how intact the control flaps remained.

If SpaceX doesn't maybe a competitor nation might. Google says the Indian ocean is almost 28k feet deep. Thats over 5 miles ... is that too deep for recovery?

 

[JB47394]

Does anyone know if they will be recovering the ship from the ocean to do a post-mortem on it? Would be interesting to see just how intact the control flaps remained.

The SpaceX stream mentioned that they won't be recovering either vehicle. I assume each had its flight termination system triggered in order to ensure that they'd sink nice and deep.

Thats over 5 miles ... is that too deep for recovery?

Deepest salvage

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The deepest successful salvage operation is the raising of the wreckage of a US Navy transport aircraft from the floor of the Philippine Sea, some 5,638 m (18,500 ft) [3.5 miles] below the surface, on 21 May 2019. The operation was carried out by a team from the US Navy Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV) using the deep-sea research ship RV Petrel.

 

[Mike1080i]

It's not clear what combination of things has to be in place. It may be that there is a huge communication window above any reentering vehicle, and the only thing that was ever needed for continuous communications was having some satellites to talk to. On the other hand, it may be that SpaceX was barely able to pull it off only because of the size of the vehicle, the number of satellites available, and their low altitude. On the third hand, the combination of Amazon's Kuiper and Blue Origin's Jarvis might produce an even better outcome. Time will tell.

Shuttles generally had good S-band comm to the TDRS satellites in geosynchronous orbit during entry. The size of the orbiter left quite a big wake in the ionized plasma and that hole allowed good a link, I suspect Starship is doing the same with both TDRS and Starlink. I believe smaller vehicles won't leave that much of a hole in the plasma for RF to escape.