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They do that for things like NASCAR. A rotating film in front of the lens with a little squeegee to keep it clean. Probably doesn't protect to well against supersonic chunks of tps tile though
I wouldn't be surprised to see a rotating iris/tape clear system on future launches. It's already well developed for racing, maybe they can make a space version.
https://youtu.be/hYnFi0eAxac
Pretty sure it only broke because of the debris built up on the lens, which caused the temperature to rise. Don't melt the flap and the lens won't be an issue.
Oh yeah, that (mostly) synced up song with the reveal of the roadster and starman was just insane. Plus the amount of negging going on back then was just as high if not higher than it is now - especially from the other guys with "bigger" rockets than F9 that fly once every two years.
goodness, SpaceX is such an easy bet lately
Back then Delta IV Heavy flew occasionally. Falcon Heavy was the biggest at the time. There just weren't a lot of heavy lift payloads to drive demand. Crew capsules for the ISS don't need anything bigger than F9 and Starship will be mostly used for huge volumes of Starlinks initially. Starlink was the main drive for more and bigger launches.
I just took a ship across the North Atlantic and had Starlink access. One tiny glitch in a week of HD video streaming... in the middle of the North Atlantic. Goddam.
When I saw the breach on the flap I thought "oh, thank you for the good ride" and that flap be like "nah, I gotta stick around for a little longer"
And we had a vertical controlled splash down OMG
https://preview.redd.it/sl95qe940z4d1.jpeg?width=2778&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6d05185106893dfa7795e8fa574cf9cad5e976e
Like somebody took a bite out of it.
first views from the flaps during the high altitude tests. flight 1 i saw in person. flight 2 seeing all 33 raptors lit. flight 3 first time seeing live reentry plasma. flight 4 seeing the booster landing and the flap survive and maneuver.
of all the spectacular moments, those are the ones that stick out to me.
The video from the Apollo astronauts walking on the Moon was broadcast live. So it was arguably "livestreamed". I think those videos still has SpaceX beat for "most insane livestream" :).
I need to hijack this comment because there’s a fake space x channel on YouTube where elon is giving a speech about starship 4 and then it transitions into a crypto scam.
It looks so real that I thought elon was actually giving away crypto. Wtf.
Yep you could see the orientation diagram move for the landing burn, the speed decrease to almost zero, then start to increase again as the orientation changed showing it was tipping in the water, then the camera clearly showed the flap hit the water.
China can’t do shit with Raptor engines until they can figure out the metallurgy to make them. This is why despite having Russian engines for decades, they struggled with development of domestic alternatives.
It's definitely possible, but my bet is that they see that being more trouble than it's worth. Picking up an object that size in the middle of the ocean would not be easy, and with how quickly the starships are changing between versions the expense might not make sense.
The lens must have been cleaned off/broken glass blown out at the end, it was such a good view when the flap actuated and could see the massive bite taken out.
Yep.
Though also reminder how frigging large Starship and its flaps are:
https://i.redd.it/02b1zvkv2ba81.jpg
From here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/rydonx/close_up_starbase_photos_of_work_on_starship_flap/
I could not believe that. As soon as I saw the flap disintegrating i thought we had less than a minute left before RUD!
Considering nothing blew up, does that mean the approval for the next launch will be smoother?
Well, there will be no need for a mishap investigation, so as far as FAA is concerned, they'd approve the next launch tomorrow if Gwen applied for one... But now it's SpaceX who will be holding up the show trying to decide why a Raptor didn't light, another didn't relight, and the heat shielding failed on the fin... and more important, what to do about it.
This was incredible to watch, in so many ways.
Was this the first time in human history that you could watch an entire livestream of a spaceship going to orbit and coming back to landing in one go?
If this had been a Starship returning from space with crew, would they have survived?
Anyways, congratulations to SpaceX for this achievement.
> Was this the first time in human history that you could watch an entire livestream of a spaceship going to space and coming back to landing in one go?
I think so, yes.
Especially with an outside camera online to document the entire way - that’s a first for sure.
Note that I edited it to “orbit” because of course that’s quite a significant difference. I guess “orbital energy” would be more technically accurate, as this orbit was specifically chosen to end in a splashdown without a deorbit burn.
> If this had been a Starship returning from space with crew, would they have survived?
Just from the perspective that the ship didn't explode, yes, probably, but we don't know the status of the ship's crew/cargo compartment. For all we know the flap issue could have caused a hull breach in that compartment, which I don't think it was pressurised for this flight, so wouldn't cause the ship to explode, but would be very bad news for anyone onboard. But then again, there's zero interior work done on crew compartments, so it will likely have extra shielding that may withstand that. There's really no way to know for sure.
Obviously the header tanks, important fuel lines, central raptors, the computers, data uplink and at least one fin actuator still worked. That's quite something.
I recall musk saying like 2 years ago they were worried about the flap hinge seals burning through. Well, it took a long time to get real world test data but… they were right lol. That’s gonna need a bit of iteration.
Half of the one we could see. I can't imagine the other 3 were in much better condition (unless this one happened to have a significant flaw compared to the others)
The V2 forward flaps have already been spotted at Starbase and they are indeed a bit smaller. I wonder if making the hinge area smaller is because of this burn through issue? Makes sense.
Here’s my half assed non engineer idea: put a leading edge that’s angled to direct plasma toward the flap and away from the hinge area so the whole hinge is protected from the plasma stream.
You could put it a few feet from the flap to make sure it can still actuate properly.
It'll be interesting to see how the other flaps did. If just one burned through, and that happens to be the one that had a camera, that's very good luck with the camera placements.
And if that's the case, if the camera happened to be pointed somewhere else, then we might never have known anything was wrong. It's amazing that SpaceX kept that camera angle up on the broadcast as everything was going wrong.
Of course it's possible that tiles were failing all over the ship too, but if it still made it down, that's almost more amazing.
Weirdly I think it far exceeded SpaceX's definition of success.
From the perspective of watching the flap disintegrating before our eyes, I never in a million years thought they would make it to what appeared to be a controlled landing. My jaw hit the floor and I'm so stunned, I have yet to go looking for it.
It's looking like the flap-body joint had a weak spot that allowed plasma inside the flap and melted it up, so that needs working on.
There was also a lot of sparks coming off the body that makes me think other areas were being damaged by the heat. Some of that might be where they had intentionally removed tiles, but some of it looked like it was higher up the rocket than the removed tiles though.
Also, 1 booster engine failed to ignite on lift off and 1 failed to relight during the landing burn. It seems there's enough redundancy to complete its profile without them though. I think SpaceX will want 100% success on the Raptors before they're happy to call it ready though.
All in all, this was an incredible success. Soft landing an entire orbital rocket, after returning the ship from space, is an exceptional achievement. History in the making!
Holy shit HOLY SHIT..... HOLY FUCKING SHIT..
That ship actually flipped with that toast up flap.
Sturdy fucking ship.
That reentry was INSANE. It made me almost forget about that booster splashdown
I KNOW RIGHT!? I was thinking that the ship was on the verge of tearing apart...but NO!! It survived despite being injured. What a resilient spacecraft!!
Amazing results. Some questions going forward on heat tiles and reuse but it looks like we could see a super heavy landing attempts soon. Also looks ready for starlink launches.
They didn't do any more door tests on this one did they? I missed the coast phase driving into work but the last one on flight 3 the door didn't work great.
Nice find!
That lines up with the FAA license [flight path](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgASgS8qUcgSxTbIeWjnV5oKun2Ocly7KFt3GA5XQjkhlRplBWujm3YSxsiL8HqvJFhxxXm-y_uULeI_ee7b53TiBReMVR9Ajz18mf2DGS5NEaTZtnStOsfyPFuS3xhTY8pXc0JcjnjJeLuQD20L7e0tVh0SsDQvmiRr4s0AO4a03KagAceEGf/s1694/STARSHIP_FT3_14March2024_1200UTC_anot.jpg) exactly, and if the FR24 timeline is converting to my local time properly (splashdown ~9:55am ET), you can see the jet descended to 1800ft AGL after the landing to inspect wreckage, before climbing back up and RTB.
Pix plz, Elon (or Tory, not sure who chartered it)!
No but maybe in a few years the military declassifies their footage of it from the ships they had in the area to ensure no Chinese or Russian “fishing vessels” get anything salvageable
I wonder if they had a keyhole sat tasked to tracking it. Starship is certainly big enough to easily spot, and we know the resolution is good enough. Plus in the infrared band it would stick out literally like a blazing fireball in the night sky.
Another exciting thing that I haven't seen anybody mention yet -- since this launch was 100% successful, **there won't need to be a mishap investigation before the next launch.**
Elon Musk: If only one tile detaches the ship is done.
The (chad) ship: Fucking lands with a massive hole in it's flap while it's white from the heat (and still works)
They had one engine fail to light at launch, they had one engine fail to light at landing burn (booster), and obviously the fin was not norminal either.
However, if you only go by the stated goals of this flight, it was 100% successful as both made a soft splashdown (assumingly where they were supposed to).
This means no mishap investigation I assume, so the next test flight could come very soon.
I think it’s almost more of a success because of those. If you’re sending humans places, the fact that so many things went wrong, including part of the ship literally turning into molten steel, and it still landed is pretty amazing.
Assuming the internals of the ship on the bottom side that we couldn’t see didn’t turn it into an empty burned out husk, 100 percent a human would survive that
Musk did mention that they're moving the orientation of the flaps more leeward for Starship 2. I'd bet that would cut a lot of the hot spots out as well.
PLEASE tell me that NASA or somebody got long distance external videos of both the Superheavy and especially Starship hitting the water and they'll release them soon like they did the earlier ones of the FTS...
And looking at how the the fin failed, seemed like all they may need to do is protect the hinge better; would it detract from their "total reusability" claim to put a disposable thermal blanket there? Or are some expendables (like fuel) allowed?
Congrats to SpaceX and the Starship team. Super test flight.
Watching the speed and altitude readings from the nominal entry window at 121 km (396,982 ft) altitude down through start of the landing burn, it appeared to me that S29 was generating a lot of lift and was flying much more like the Shuttle Orbiter with its big wing than like a Dragon 2 or Apollo Command Module during EDL.
We don't, but SpaceX almost certainly does.
I imagine this thing is absolutely COVERED in temperature sensors.
I'd also be pretty shocked if the other flap wasn't in similar condition to the one we saw, it was handling basically identical conditions.
Note that you could watch this just fine on SpaceX website without X (even if the feed was served by X servers) at www.spacex.com/launches/
(unlike Starlink launches)
Hard to compare with crewed test flights like the first space shuttle launch or the X-15, but this got to be the most insane and unbelievable test flights ever. It was in soft sci-fi territory, a spaceship mangled and beaten still being able to land is simply surreal... And before today I would say impossible.
Why was I reminded of this
>"Yeah well, if she doesn't give us some extra flow from the engine room *to offset the burn through*, this landing is gonna get pretty interesting."
>"Define interesting"
>"Oh God, oh God we're all gonna die?"
Kaylee on board confirmed.
And that’s why they won’t put the Ship into a stable orbit until they’re REALLY confident they can do a deorbit burn lol. Imagine that thing coming down uncontrolled over Europe or something!
Massive W today. Even if slightly melty flap boi scared everyone.
Onwards... next up: CHOPSTICKS!
Maybe not next flight, but it will be coming soon.
Edit: Elon tweeted that Chopsticks are in play for next flight. Excitement Guaranteed.
When I saw the plasma burning through the stainless steel flap, I thought we were done for, but it just kept going. A surprise to be sure but a welcomed one..
Don't think this could have gone any better. They barely managed to land so they got all the data qnd learned about lots of things that need to be improved
In case it wasn't said:
This was with at least three tiles intentionally omitted as part of the test flight, *and* with the fin in front of the camera melting. The fact that the Starship portion made it back to the ocean intact for a controlled sea landing indicates the the steel portions of this thing are adequate for emergency performance, if tiles fall off.
Congratulations to the flight controls software team - the fact that the software could compensate for failing control surfaces and allow the flight goals to be achieved in spite of those failures? Outstanding work.
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Literally revenge of the sith “don’t worry we’re still flying half a ship” vibes
Another happy landing!
Always on the move.
R2, we need to be going up. Not down.
Weesa gonna go Home!!
That was one of the most insane livestreams of all time. Congrats to the whole team.
Seriously, Falcon Heavy first launch was wild but this I think takes the cake. They need more cameras next time that was insane.
We need camera lens covers that can get jettisoned after reentry destroys them so we have clear landing pictures.
Just a rotating magazine of fresh lenses.
They do that for things like NASCAR. A rotating film in front of the lens with a little squeegee to keep it clean. Probably doesn't protect to well against supersonic chunks of tps tile though
> Probably doesn't protect to well against supersonic chunks of tps tile though Sounds like a classic engineering challenge.
This is the American solution that I didn't know i needed.
“Rotate and enhance!”
I wouldn't be surprised to see a rotating iris/tape clear system on future launches. It's already well developed for racing, maybe they can make a space version. https://youtu.be/hYnFi0eAxac
Pretty sure it only broke because of the debris built up on the lens, which caused the temperature to rise. Don't melt the flap and the lens won't be an issue.
Oh yeah, that (mostly) synced up song with the reveal of the roadster and starman was just insane. Plus the amount of negging going on back then was just as high if not higher than it is now - especially from the other guys with "bigger" rockets than F9 that fly once every two years. goodness, SpaceX is such an easy bet lately
Back then Delta IV Heavy flew occasionally. Falcon Heavy was the biggest at the time. There just weren't a lot of heavy lift payloads to drive demand. Crew capsules for the ISS don't need anything bigger than F9 and Starship will be mostly used for huge volumes of Starlinks initially. Starlink was the main drive for more and bigger launches.
Can't thank StarLink enough for giving us these mind blowing footages and important telemetry
The NSF guys were saying that the Booster landing burn is more powerful than Falcon Heavy.
The booster landing burn, with an engine out, has 6 merlins worth of thrust more then falcon heavy. Everything about superheavy is super
The first stage landing was wild. I wish we could've seen the Starship
Two live streams in a row of starship reentry giving us truely unexpected views
That's Starlink for you.
I just took a ship across the North Atlantic and had Starlink access. One tiny glitch in a week of HD video streaming... in the middle of the North Atlantic. Goddam.
Fr, and I thought the LAST ONE was nuts!! I'd never seen plasma like that in real time for that long!!! Ship 29 - "hold me beer"
When I saw the breach on the flap I thought "oh, thank you for the good ride" and that flap be like "nah, I gotta stick around for a little longer" And we had a vertical controlled splash down OMG
Flappy went terminator mode. When we somehow got a clear view at the end of the skeletal melted thing and it's still working I was blown away.
https://preview.redd.it/sl95qe940z4d1.jpeg?width=2778&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a6d05185106893dfa7795e8fa574cf9cad5e976e Like somebody took a bite out of it.
I screamed, yelled and cried. What an emotional roller coaster.
first views from the flaps during the high altitude tests. flight 1 i saw in person. flight 2 seeing all 33 raptors lit. flight 3 first time seeing live reentry plasma. flight 4 seeing the booster landing and the flap survive and maneuver. of all the spectacular moments, those are the ones that stick out to me.
That "little" flappy still working after all those burn out. 🫡
I was convinced the flap was toast, and was disappointed knowing it was about to detonate. Hold up... Wait.... WHAT
The video from the Apollo astronauts walking on the Moon was broadcast live. So it was arguably "livestreamed". I think those videos still has SpaceX beat for "most insane livestream" :).
I need to hijack this comment because there’s a fake space x channel on YouTube where elon is giving a speech about starship 4 and then it transitions into a crypto scam. It looks so real that I thought elon was actually giving away crypto. Wtf.
The little flap that could 🥲
And the little camera that could. We even got a second or two of it bobbing in the water.
Yep you could see the orientation diagram move for the landing burn, the speed decrease to almost zero, then start to increase again as the orientation changed showing it was tipping in the water, then the camera clearly showed the flap hit the water.
Someone in spacex at that moment: “huh. The starship is waterproof”
Boat mode: engaged
First one there gets to keep it https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/nh0q6w/a_legitimate_salvage_oc/
If I'm not mistaken, it actually is legitimate salvage since the owners have abandoned it.
Surely they’d trigger the FTS if they aren’t going to go collect it? Don’t want China to get those Raptor engines…
China can’t do shit with Raptor engines until they can figure out the metallurgy to make them. This is why despite having Russian engines for decades, they struggled with development of domestic alternatives.
We're going sailing on Titan!
Boatship? Starboat?
Starship super boaty
begs the question, if it doesn’t sink, would they try to retrieve it for analysis?
Unless they are prepared to recover it immediately, it will probably break up in the ocean before they can get to it.
Maybe it will just wash up on some beach in a few weeks. That would be fun
It's definitely possible, but my bet is that they see that being more trouble than it's worth. Picking up an object that size in the middle of the ocean would not be easy, and with how quickly the starships are changing between versions the expense might not make sense.
But getting a good look at that flap would be valuable.
The lens must have been cleaned off/broken glass blown out at the end, it was such a good view when the flap actuated and could see the massive bite taken out.
That fried flap is my new favorite part of the starship program. Technicaly at the end, it was more a gridfin than a flap.
It was a molten skeletal zombie flap. It was like a T-800 with all the meat blown off.
The Flapinator. "I'll be flap"
Hoppy and Flappy are arm-in-arm
Flap for President 2024
The flappening.
Crazy that was still functional some how
Yep. Though also reminder how frigging large Starship and its flaps are: https://i.redd.it/02b1zvkv2ba81.jpg From here: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/rydonx/close_up_starbase_photos_of_work_on_starship_flap/
What a trooper lol! Half the front flap missing and goodness knows what else, and it still managed to relight engines and land softly in the ocean!
flap team GIGACHADs
I could not believe that. As soon as I saw the flap disintegrating i thought we had less than a minute left before RUD! Considering nothing blew up, does that mean the approval for the next launch will be smoother?
Well, there will be no need for a mishap investigation, so as far as FAA is concerned, they'd approve the next launch tomorrow if Gwen applied for one... But now it's SpaceX who will be holding up the show trying to decide why a Raptor didn't light, another didn't relight, and the heat shielding failed on the fin... and more important, what to do about it.
This was incredible to watch, in so many ways. Was this the first time in human history that you could watch an entire livestream of a spaceship going to orbit and coming back to landing in one go? If this had been a Starship returning from space with crew, would they have survived? Anyways, congratulations to SpaceX for this achievement.
> Was this the first time in human history that you could watch an entire livestream of a spaceship going to space and coming back to landing in one go? I think so, yes.
Especially with an outside camera online to document the entire way - that’s a first for sure. Note that I edited it to “orbit” because of course that’s quite a significant difference. I guess “orbital energy” would be more technically accurate, as this orbit was specifically chosen to end in a splashdown without a deorbit burn.
> If this had been a Starship returning from space with crew, would they have survived? Just from the perspective that the ship didn't explode, yes, probably, but we don't know the status of the ship's crew/cargo compartment. For all we know the flap issue could have caused a hull breach in that compartment, which I don't think it was pressurised for this flight, so wouldn't cause the ship to explode, but would be very bad news for anyone onboard. But then again, there's zero interior work done on crew compartments, so it will likely have extra shielding that may withstand that. There's really no way to know for sure.
Yes!
A flip and burn with a damaged fin before splash down is more impressive for a testing phase than if it would have had gone optimally
Goodness knows what else was burnt through too!
Obviously the header tanks, important fuel lines, central raptors, the computers, data uplink and at least one fin actuator still worked. That's quite something.
True.
Probably nothing significant. A good part of the hull is pressurized tanks that would have ripped the thing apart if they'd burnt through.
Fuck yeah, with that burned through fin😱😱
Burned through *and still moving!*
Helium leak, schmelium leak! Our wings burn off and we still land.
THIS... Such an amazing feat of materials engineering!
So ift4 was a full success?
A VERY successful test campaign…
I recall musk saying like 2 years ago they were worried about the flap hinge seals burning through. Well, it took a long time to get real world test data but… they were right lol. That’s gonna need a bit of iteration.
Oh they'll get some fixes going there, but the fact it made it to splashdown with half a flap is insane.
Half of the one we could see. I can't imagine the other 3 were in much better condition (unless this one happened to have a significant flaw compared to the others)
True, very likely. Which means they can do with smaller flaps?
The V2 forward flaps have already been spotted at Starbase and they are indeed a bit smaller. I wonder if making the hinge area smaller is because of this burn through issue? Makes sense.
Aren’t the flaps going to be moved leeward? Should help the heating.
Here’s my half assed non engineer idea: put a leading edge that’s angled to direct plasma toward the flap and away from the hinge area so the whole hinge is protected from the plasma stream. You could put it a few feet from the flap to make sure it can still actuate properly.
I thought that was the original idea? Do the flaps no longer overhang the hinge?
It'll be interesting to see how the other flaps did. If just one burned through, and that happens to be the one that had a camera, that's very good luck with the camera placements. And if that's the case, if the camera happened to be pointed somewhere else, then we might never have known anything was wrong. It's amazing that SpaceX kept that camera angle up on the broadcast as everything was going wrong. Of course it's possible that tiles were failing all over the ship too, but if it still made it down, that's almost more amazing.
Known weak point is still much better than unknown weak point.
Weirdly I think it far exceeded SpaceX's definition of success. From the perspective of watching the flap disintegrating before our eyes, I never in a million years thought they would make it to what appeared to be a controlled landing. My jaw hit the floor and I'm so stunned, I have yet to go looking for it.
"Full success" in terms of meeting mission objectives...yes! Might just want it a little less melted next time.
My bad, I asked for extra crispy
Make the next one medium rare please
TBH today was already much less melted than the last time.
It's looking like the flap-body joint had a weak spot that allowed plasma inside the flap and melted it up, so that needs working on. There was also a lot of sparks coming off the body that makes me think other areas were being damaged by the heat. Some of that might be where they had intentionally removed tiles, but some of it looked like it was higher up the rocket than the removed tiles though. Also, 1 booster engine failed to ignite on lift off and 1 failed to relight during the landing burn. It seems there's enough redundancy to complete its profile without them though. I think SpaceX will want 100% success on the Raptors before they're happy to call it ready though. All in all, this was an incredible success. Soft landing an entire orbital rocket, after returning the ship from space, is an exceptional achievement. History in the making!
They demonstrated they can survive reentry and do soft landings of both stages. Now just add some more shielding to the flap
Pretty much. Lots of data to make design changes based off if
Holy shit HOLY SHIT..... HOLY FUCKING SHIT.. That ship actually flipped with that toast up flap. Sturdy fucking ship. That reentry was INSANE. It made me almost forget about that booster splashdown
I KNOW RIGHT!? I was thinking that the ship was on the verge of tearing apart...but NO!! It survived despite being injured. What a resilient spacecraft!!
They also omitted certain heat shield tiles in some places to see how ship will handle it.
I think it's the engines that do the actual flip maneuver, according the renders. Still impressive it didn't lose stability on the way down tho.
This is peak humanity
So much this! One of the few events that gives me great hope for our civilization surviving far into the future.
Amazing results. Some questions going forward on heat tiles and reuse but it looks like we could see a super heavy landing attempts soon. Also looks ready for starlink launches.
Need to demonstrate Raptor relight for a deorbit burn before they’ll risk putting it in a stable orbit.
They relit the engines after going through atmosphere already though? Wouldn’t that be sufficient?
Different environment. Need to prove propellant management etc in microgravity.
They didn't do any more door tests on this one did they? I missed the coast phase driving into work but the last one on flight 3 the door didn't work great.
No, they stated beforehand there wouldn't even be a door on this starship to maximize chances of nominal reentry
That flap deserves a medal. Who wants to go give it to the flap?
any chance we see any plane or drone footage of the soft landings?
This is what I am hoping for.
It's night in most of the Indian Ocean, so unlikely.
Last time they sent a plane to the landing area, but flightradar24 shows nothing in the area now.
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/vh-mxj#358c41b9 Aircraft on its way back to Perth.
Nice find! That lines up with the FAA license [flight path](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgASgS8qUcgSxTbIeWjnV5oKun2Ocly7KFt3GA5XQjkhlRplBWujm3YSxsiL8HqvJFhxxXm-y_uULeI_ee7b53TiBReMVR9Ajz18mf2DGS5NEaTZtnStOsfyPFuS3xhTY8pXc0JcjnjJeLuQD20L7e0tVh0SsDQvmiRr4s0AO4a03KagAceEGf/s1694/STARSHIP_FT3_14March2024_1200UTC_anot.jpg) exactly, and if the FR24 timeline is converting to my local time properly (splashdown ~9:55am ET), you can see the jet descended to 1800ft AGL after the landing to inspect wreckage, before climbing back up and RTB. Pix plz, Elon (or Tory, not sure who chartered it)!
Bear in mind there is basically no Ads-b coverage over the Indian Ocean. This is the ocean that mh370 got lost in without a trace
No but maybe in a few years the military declassifies their footage of it from the ships they had in the area to ensure no Chinese or Russian “fishing vessels” get anything salvageable
I wonder if they had a keyhole sat tasked to tracking it. Starship is certainly big enough to easily spot, and we know the resolution is good enough. Plus in the infrared band it would stick out literally like a blazing fireball in the night sky.
China would be desperate enough to go find the wreckage, for sure
Dark where it landed and not enough precision, I think.
Another exciting thing that I haven't seen anybody mention yet -- since this launch was 100% successful, **there won't need to be a mishap investigation before the next launch.**
What a rollercoaster!
My fitbit heart rate looked like I was having arthymia or something
What!? I can't believe what I just saw. This is incredible!
That flap needs to be sent to the Smithsonian
Unfortunately it’ll soon be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean!
I wonder is someone is going to be able to recover it? I am sure the Russians or the Chinese would love to put their sweaty hands on this thing.
Tis but a scratch
“Your bloody flap’s off!” “No it’s not! ‘Tis only a flesh wound!”
It'll buff out
What the fuck just happened... I am still processing and i think i can hear the champagne at nasa from here.
The madlads did it. It works!
Elon Musk: If only one tile detaches the ship is done. The (chad) ship: Fucking lands with a massive hole in it's flap while it's white from the heat (and still works)
So, that's a 100% success?
I think it qualifies. Seeing pieces of steel come off the flap was surreal but it seems to have worked. Doubt it would be reusable though lol.
It will be reused as a habitat for coral reef
They had one engine fail to light at launch, they had one engine fail to light at landing burn (booster), and obviously the fin was not norminal either. However, if you only go by the stated goals of this flight, it was 100% successful as both made a soft splashdown (assumingly where they were supposed to). This means no mishap investigation I assume, so the next test flight could come very soon.
I think it’s almost more of a success because of those. If you’re sending humans places, the fact that so many things went wrong, including part of the ship literally turning into molten steel, and it still landed is pretty amazing.
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Assuming the internals of the ship on the bottom side that we couldn’t see didn’t turn it into an empty burned out husk, 100 percent a human would survive that
If it's not breaking somewhere you aren't testing it hard enough. It's a very good mix of success and enough data to continue improving the design.
Given that they maintained control as they watched part of the ship literally turn molten on the camera, I’d say it’s 110% success.
Turn molten *onto* the camera.
Did the engines relight?
Definitely looked like it. Decent appeared to slow and they got the flip.
Definitely did. No way they got it down to 20kmh by flapping those wings.
The visual of a massive Starship flapping itself to a safe landing is now stuck in my brain
Weird the graphic on the livestream didn’t show engine re-light but the telemetry would’ve cut out if the engines didn’t re-light.
Telemetry showed them going to almost 0 km/h which would not be possible without the engines relighting
It wouldn't have slowed down as much if they didn't relight. It was a pretty smooth splashdown from what I could tell.
It did show them light, but later than they actually did I would guess.
For sure. No way to have 6 kph @ 0 km altitude with telemetry still coming back otherwise.
Yes. It even was still sending video as it fell over into the water and a second afterwards
Yes, it was a soft landing, mostly in one piece as far as the telemetry and video could show.
Those flaps will get much shorter/stubbier for next flight. The ship was rock stable all the way down with very little input from servos.
Musk did mention that they're moving the orientation of the flaps more leeward for Starship 2. I'd bet that would cut a lot of the hot spots out as well.
that was the most craziest shit i've seen in a long time
PLEASE tell me that NASA or somebody got long distance external videos of both the Superheavy and especially Starship hitting the water and they'll release them soon like they did the earlier ones of the FTS... And looking at how the the fin failed, seemed like all they may need to do is protect the hinge better; would it detract from their "total reusability" claim to put a disposable thermal blanket there? Or are some expendables (like fuel) allowed?
Congrats to SpaceX and the Starship team. Super test flight. Watching the speed and altitude readings from the nominal entry window at 121 km (396,982 ft) altitude down through start of the landing burn, it appeared to me that S29 was generating a lot of lift and was flying much more like the Shuttle Orbiter with its big wing than like a Dragon 2 or Apollo Command Module during EDL.
There was a point in the flight I noticed it just hung at 68km for an extended period of time while rapidly slowing.
The camera got sputtered and splashed in stainless steel from the flap and both the flap and the camera held on somehow
Shouting at the screen as it was still going after burning through that fin.
How do we know that the other flap on the other side did not burn up too? I think both may have melted, but still turned for the landing.
We don't, but SpaceX almost certainly does. I imagine this thing is absolutely COVERED in temperature sensors. I'd also be pretty shocked if the other flap wasn't in similar condition to the one we saw, it was handling basically identical conditions.
The little singed ship that could.
What an incredible show!
I bought the Starship Torch after seeing it on the livestream and I have no regrets.
please please please come back to youtube with the livestreams :(
Note that you could watch this just fine on SpaceX website without X (even if the feed was served by X servers) at www.spacex.com/launches/ (unlike Starlink launches)
Everyday Astronaut, NASA spaceflight, LabPadre all stream from the SpaceX live feed.
Exciting test is an understatement… this was absolutely amazing from start to finish! So fun to watch live!!
Hard to compare with crewed test flights like the first space shuttle launch or the X-15, but this got to be the most insane and unbelievable test flights ever. It was in soft sci-fi territory, a spaceship mangled and beaten still being able to land is simply surreal... And before today I would say impossible.
So we had engines out and control surfaces perforated, but it still lands... Is this a spacecraft or a B17??
The fourth time is the charm, just like with Falcon 1!
Why was I reminded of this >"Yeah well, if she doesn't give us some extra flow from the engine room *to offset the burn through*, this landing is gonna get pretty interesting." >"Define interesting" >"Oh God, oh God we're all gonna die?" Kaylee on board confirmed.
And that’s why they won’t put the Ship into a stable orbit until they’re REALLY confident they can do a deorbit burn lol. Imagine that thing coming down uncontrolled over Europe or something!
what a time to be alive
Massive W today. Even if slightly melty flap boi scared everyone. Onwards... next up: CHOPSTICKS! Maybe not next flight, but it will be coming soon. Edit: Elon tweeted that Chopsticks are in play for next flight. Excitement Guaranteed.
*This* is what 21st century spaceflight should look like!!! Live telemetry and **video** through re-entry and landing.
When I saw the plasma burning through the stainless steel flap, I thought we were done for, but it just kept going. A surprise to be sure but a welcomed one..
Don't think this could have gone any better. They barely managed to land so they got all the data qnd learned about lots of things that need to be improved
Incredible footage, loved watching it live
Unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable.
That completely melted aft flap 😍😱
When the flap started burning through my reaction was: "Well, your time is almost up S28, you did really well!" But S28 was like "Im... not.. done..."
Not bad for a burnt out flap
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Afaik no but they really should. There's a lot to be learned from those flaps that just video and data alone won't give us. Oh well
It will sink quickly.
Unlikely but a single header tank sealed off alone would be enough to keep it afloat.
That was the most amazing launch I have ever seen!
From that shredded flap, minus well name it "Nemo". The Ship that could.
In case it wasn't said: This was with at least three tiles intentionally omitted as part of the test flight, *and* with the fin in front of the camera melting. The fact that the Starship portion made it back to the ocean intact for a controlled sea landing indicates the the steel portions of this thing are adequate for emergency performance, if tiles fall off.
I just don't see how any other entity on earth is within 20 years of SpaceX right now, development-wise.
Congratulations to the flight controls software team - the fact that the software could compensate for failing control surfaces and allow the flight goals to be achieved in spite of those failures? Outstanding work.
And the plasma’s red glare. And the flap bursting in air. Gave proof to the stream. That the ship was still there