The flap burning partway off way up at 55 km altitude at 15,000 kph - but it didn't give up and hung on! Not only that, it continued to function providing aerodynamic control
Hopefully this success will speed things up. A launch every one to two months is still a turtle pace, given the legion of challenging goals that yet have to be worked-out and achieved.
Heck, if the very first attempt of the grabber arms to catch a returning booster fails or the latter falls off mark, the damage to the launch tower and debris-struck nearby tanks could take a half year to repair or rebuild.
Wonderful summary thread by the equally wonderful Vicki Cocks, with SpaceX video illustrating all of the day's milestones, from initial launch to the ship's final landing burn shutdown. As one of the SpaceX commentators aptly puts it, "What a day!"
YazataJun 6, 2024 10:35 PM (This post was last modified: Jun 6, 2024 11:40 PM by Yazata.)
Will have to keep an eye on Mauricio - he was trying to get the coordinates of the booster splashdown so he could fly out there in his Cessna and photograph the booster floating in the water.
Starship’s fourth flight test launched with ambitious goals, attempting to go farther than any previous test before and begin demonstrating capabilities central to return and reuse of Starship and Super Heavy. The payload for this test was the data.
Starship delivered.
On June 6, 2024, Starship successfully lifted off at 7:50 a.m. CT from Starbase in Texas and went on to deliver maximum excitement:
The Super Heavy booster lifted off successfully and completed a full-duration ascent burn.
Starship executed another successful hot-stage separation, powering down all but three of Super Heavy’s Raptor engines and successfully igniting the six second stage Raptor engines before separating the vehicles.
Following separation, the Super Heavy booster successfully completed its flip maneuver, boostback burn to send it towards the splashdown zone, and jettison of the hot-stage adapter.
The booster’s flight ended with a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico seven minutes and 24 seconds into the flight.
Starship's six second stage Raptor engines successfully powered the vehicle to space and placed it on the planned trajectory for coast.
Starship made a controlled reentry, successfully making it through the phases of peak heating and max aerodynamic pressure and demonstrating the ability to control the vehicle using its flaps while descending through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds.
Starlink on Starship once again enabled real-time telemetry and live high-definition video throughout every phase of entry, with external cameras providing views all the way to the flight’s conclusion.
Flight 4 ended with Starship igniting its three center Raptor engines and executing the first flip maneuver and landing burn since our suborbital campaign, followed by a soft splashdown of the ship in the Indian Ocean one hour and six minutes after launch.
The fourth flight of Starship made major strides to bring us closer to a rapidly reusable future. Its accomplishments will provide data to drive improvements as we continue rapidly developing Starship into a fully reusable transportation system designed to carry crew and cargo to Earth orbit, the Moon, Mars and beyond.
Congratulations to the entire SpaceX team on an inspired fourth flight test of Starship! And thank you to our customers, Cameron County, spaceflight fans, and the wider community for the continued support and encouragement.
I thoroughly enjoyed this morning's movie, though I think the scriptwriters went a bit overboard with the "little flap that could" substory and the conveniently timed communications dropouts. No real mission would be like that...
Elon and his engineers were aware that the flap hinges were a point of vulnerability during reentry
From Tim Dodd's recent (evening before the flight) interview with Elon (the entire video of the interview isn't out yet, but this is a very topical portion).
YazataJun 7, 2024 07:44 PM (This post was last modified: Jun 7, 2024 08:04 PM by Yazata.)
Ellie Sheriff's (the Ellie in Space channel) gets a post-Flight 4 interview with Elon.
In it, Elon reveals that booster B11 landed in the precise spot intended with a descent velocity approaching zero as it reached the water. (That's Falcon-9 level performance, which was the goal.) So, if the rest of his team is on board with the idea, he wants to try a booster tower catch on Flight 5!
The ship itself came down 6 km away from its intended landing spot (halfway around the world), but it survived reentering the earth's atmosphere like a meteor and successfully conducted its landing burn.
And Elon also says that when he saw what was happening to it, he didn't think that the Flap would survive all the way down to a successful ship landing. (Like the rest of us, I certainly didn't.) The Flap had shed many of its tiles and the reentry airflow was contacting bare steel. That makes Elon happy that he went with steel instead of carbon-composite or aluminum (more typical rocket materials) neither of which would have performed nearly as well.
(Jun 7, 2024 07:44 PM)Yazata Wrote: Ellie Sheriff's (the Ellie in Space channel) gets a post-Flight 4 interview with Elon.
In it, Elon reveals that booster B11 landed in the precise spot intended with a descent velocity approaching zero as it reached the water. (That's Falcon-9 level performance, which was the goal.) So, if the rest of his team is on board with the idea, he wants to try a booster tower catch on Flight 5!
The ship itself came down 6 km away from its intended landing spot (halfway around the world), but it survived reentering the earth's atmosphere like a meteor and successfully conducted its landing burn.
And Elon also says that when he saw what was happening to it, he didn't think that the Flap would survive all the way down to a successful ship landing. (Like the rest of us, I certainly didn't.) The Flap had shed many of its tiles and the reentry airflow was contacting bare steel. That makes Elon happy that he went with steel instead of carbon-composite or aluminum (more typical rocket materials) neither of which would have performed nearly as well.
If any significant progress was being made on the second launch tower (i.e., if near completion), I might say wait until that is done so that there is a back-up in case of disaster.
But I guess there is zilch occurring in that department, so might as well be trying to salvage and reuse the boosters. Also, get a head-start on rebuilding now, if the launch tower and area get wrecked via a close miss.
Jun 6, 2024 01:52 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 6, 2024 04:18 PM by Yazata.)
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