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That's what I originally saw, but I went off to find a picture of the hot staging ring to show you the three clamps that mongo was talking about. Remember this image? It's a great closeup, and it shows that the external reinforcement was there from the start. You can also easily see the three clamping structures. Starship 25 has six opening for clamps, but neither booster 9 nor the hot staging ring have six clamps. I'm sure that future Starships will have only three openings.
That took about 46 minutes from the start of the lift to touching the ground stand.
Did anyone else notice Brian's hard hat up against the railing in top right of the photo?That's what I originally saw, but I went off to find a picture of the hot staging ring to show you the three clamps that mongo was talking about. Remember this image? It's a great closeup, and it shows that the external reinforcement was there from the start. You can also easily see the three clamping structures. Starship 25 has six opening for clamps, but neither booster 9 nor the hot staging ring have six clamps. I'm sure that future Starships will have only three openings.
Hey, anyone seen Brian??
BRIAN!?
??BRIAN!!!!???
BRI-AAAAAN???
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
Confirmed, single engine burn simulating deorbit
If they were trying to simulate a reentry burn, wouldn't they want to be firing ullage thrusters to seat the propellants? Perhaps that big vent prior to firing the engine was simulating that thruster firing, just without any hardware to direct the thrust backwards. During the preburner test the NSF guys seemed to be surprised when they saw that hard vent, thinking it was a depress. It was duplicated on this run.
How would a vent in 1G simulate firing ullage thrusters in orbit at 0G? Or am I misunderstanding what you wrote?
It doesn't in terms of vehicle dynamics, but it does (somewhat) in terms of vehicle systems.
To settle propellant, we need X acceleration for Y seconds, that's Z flow of gas at pressure A in a vacuum. Compensating for sea level, vent for B seconds and verify start and stop pressures. Then light engine.
Also, rotate ship for retrograde thrust.
The vents are the thrusters, last I heard.
Could also be a lower tank pressure (simulating cooled ullage) startup test.
Buckminster
Well-Known Member
By the way, months ago when it became apparent that S26 was being built without tiles and flaps, it was speculated that it could be the first HLS prototype. So it’s interesting to see the first de-orbit burn test has been done using S26.
Of course Starships in LEO that are intended to return to Earth will also have to do a de-orbit burn. But SpaceX has to show NASA that it is making progress with the HLS vehicle so this test will hopefully show that.
Of course Starships in LEO that are intended to return to Earth will also have to do a de-orbit burn. But SpaceX has to show NASA that it is making progress with the HLS vehicle so this test will hopefully show that.
Given the amount of work that is going to have to go into getting an HLS vehicle to the moon, I'm not sure that a pad test of a retrofire will instill much enthusiasm in NASA. SpaceX has to get orbital, prove on-orbit refueling, and perform eight tanker runs to the final HLS vehicle. I'm guessing that they'll work with an HLS pathfinder vehicle first. They'd use that pathfinder as a target for refueling until they think they have it worked out. Then they can launch HLS, launch the tanker runs, and send it off to the Moon. All the while, they'd be working on reentry and reuse of booster and Starship.
I figure it'll take a dozen flights before they launch HLS. Do we assume 1 month between flights? Two months? It's going to be 20 flights before HLS is ready to go to the Moon, and that could mean 2-3 years of flying. There's even the question of whether HLS can sit on orbit with propellants while SpaceX builds new boosters and ships. Things will move much faster once they figure out reuse, but who knows when that will happen? Falcon 9 took 5 years, but I think we can expect them to move much faster for their second reusable vehicle.
Probably complicating everything will be the desire to launch lots of Starlink satellites. NASA may end up frustrated when they see missions devoted to that instead of advancing HLS. Perhaps SpaceX can finagle both while they're testing the refueling process. I doubt there's a need to do full propellant loads to the pathfinder vehicle.
S25 has been re-stacked. At 14:30 in this video you can see a drone hovering close to the booster/ship as they are connected. Then keep watching for a nice closeup of the ship QD being connected.
Today they did two partial tanking tests plus a deluge system test.
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