SpaceX Soars Through New Milestones in Test Flight of the Most Powerful Rocket Ever Built (cnn.com) 145
New submitter OwnedByTwoCats writes: SpaceX's Starship, the most powerful launch vehicle ever built, launched Thursday and achieved key objectives laid out for its fourth test flight that demonstrated the vehicle's reusability. The highly anticipated event was the company's second uncrewed test of 2024. Launch occurred from the private Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas, at 7:50 a.m. CT (8:50 a.m. ET), and the company streamed live coverage on X, formerly known as Twitter, drawing millions of viewers.
The Starship launch system includes the upper Starship spacecraft and a rocket booster known as the Super Heavy. Of the rocket's 33 engines, 32 lit during launch, according to the SpaceX broadcast. The vehicle soared through multiple milestones during Thursday's test flight, including the survival of the Starship capsule upon reentry during peak heating in Earth's atmosphere and splashdown of both the capsule and booster. After separating from the spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster for the first time successfully executed a landing burn and had a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about eight minutes after launch.
Meanwhile, the Starship capsule successfully achieved orbital insertion. About 50 minutes after launch, the spacecraft began its controlled reentry journey, and an incredibly colorful buildup of plasma could be seen around the vehicle as its heat shield faced the extreme temperatures of Earth's atmosphere. The company's Starlink satellites helped facilitate a livestream that was continuously available during reentry. A flap near the camera view on Starship appeared to scorch during reentry and particulate matter blocked some of the view of the camera. But in the end, there was enough of a view to see Starship achieve its expected landing burn into the Indian Ocean.
The Starship launch system includes the upper Starship spacecraft and a rocket booster known as the Super Heavy. Of the rocket's 33 engines, 32 lit during launch, according to the SpaceX broadcast. The vehicle soared through multiple milestones during Thursday's test flight, including the survival of the Starship capsule upon reentry during peak heating in Earth's atmosphere and splashdown of both the capsule and booster. After separating from the spacecraft, the Super Heavy booster for the first time successfully executed a landing burn and had a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about eight minutes after launch.
Meanwhile, the Starship capsule successfully achieved orbital insertion. About 50 minutes after launch, the spacecraft began its controlled reentry journey, and an incredibly colorful buildup of plasma could be seen around the vehicle as its heat shield faced the extreme temperatures of Earth's atmosphere. The company's Starlink satellites helped facilitate a livestream that was continuously available during reentry. A flap near the camera view on Starship appeared to scorch during reentry and particulate matter blocked some of the view of the camera. But in the end, there was enough of a view to see Starship achieve its expected landing burn into the Indian Ocean.
The flap that survived (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also a great achievements that they were able to transmit telemetry through the plasma shock region of the reentry by using Starlink.
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1. It's clearly faked because it's (proven/handed down from my preferred deity) that you can't get signals through the plasma
2. See - the Apollo stuff was faked because they didn't show reentry
3. The earth is flat because reasons
Re:The flap that survived (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was simple. The plasma only blocks communication to the ground. All you have to do is create your own satellite communications constellation, and transmit the telemetry upward instead of downward. It's a piece of cake... for any Bond villain / Tony Stark-tier guy.
Hah, that's a good way to put it. Well said!
Re:The flap that survived (Score:5, Informative)
There's more to it than that. The vehicle itself creates a hole in the plasma, so signals can get out and up out. Smaller spacecraft create much less of a deflection and thus less chance of communication, even up to satellite. So part of why we can have a video feed is because of starlink being present and having coverage everywhere from up above, and part of it is because of Starship's massive size. It's the biggest spacecraft to complete reentry eve made.
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I think it's probable that all the flaps suffered similar damage. Obviously the software was able to compensate and control the spacecraft despite the damage. Anywhere there's a hinge, there's a tiny gap for plasma to enter and go through. I'm sure this will be a focus for the engineers heading into the next flight.
Re:The flap that survived (Score:5, Interesting)
Credit goes to the choice of building it out of stainless steel. I was on the record being apprehensive about the original plan to use carbon fibre, and I've always been a fan of steel and titanium over alumium, for resilience. Steel (and titanium) not only simplifies the TPS (as the structure can run hotter), but also tends to have much more graceful failure mechanisms. Early in the Shuttle's history there was a burnthrough where it only lucked into survival because it happened to burn through a spot where there was a steel component backing it. Columbia by contrast wasn't so lucky. It doesn't take long for plasma to obliterate alumium.
Part of the (thin) skin of the flaps burned through by the end, but the thicker structural ribs inside were clearly uncompromised, and even the actuation system remained structurally sound. Thank you, steel :)
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Notably, they stopped broadcasting the other camera view during re-entry, the one looking aft from the trailing edge of the forward port flap. It's entirely possible that the camera got obliterated, or its cabling vaporized.
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Scortch (Score:5, Informative)
That is an understatement. There was a gradual failure of the thermal protection near the flap hinge. In the latter portions of re-entry, the plasma ate its way through the flap - melting metal and eroding it away. The debris from the flap splattered over the camera lens, gradually obscuring the view of the damage. Amazingly, the flap remained attached and actuated all the way down. (Presumably, losing a flap would lead to total loss of the spacecraft.) By the time it came for splashdown, the camera view had cleared up enough to show that a good chunk of the flap was just plain gone.
And that was just from the one camera angle that was live-streaming through the middle of re-entry. It's quite possible there were other wild things happening elsewhere on Starship that we couldn't see.
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I think the main problem with the camera was that its auto-focus was confused by all the crap on the lens. When the flap started moving, it would suddenly go into focus for a moment.
And it was a completely bonkers landing, well worth the price of admission. I was wondering how long it could hold on with all the stuff falling off, then suddenly it flips up and it's in the water.
Re:Scortch (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah my suspicion is the shielding on the flaps is going to be an engineering focus from this flight on, looking at the buildout for as clean and nice as the tile system is on the body when it comes to the fins there's just a lot of moving parts directly in the plasma direction, lot's of pockets where it can dig into which was destroyed Columbia so they are definitely aware of it, but like they need the flaps to move, I know they had discussed moving the flaps further "up" on the body to direct more plasma away.
I am not an aerospace engineer so I am sure they ahve some potential solutions. The fact this has presented as a problem at all is good news in it''s own way, that means you've made it to the point where you know it's an issue.
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This was already known as a potential problem. The next version of the ship (already being built) will have the flaps a bit higher to move the hinges into the plasma shadow of the body.
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If you look closely, you can actually see the heat tiles breaking off before the real damage begins.
IIRC, the Shuttle had the same problems with it's thermal tiles in the beginning. But the scientists went to work and made them better because they now knew there was a problem, and had data to describe the shape of the problem.
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That is an understatement. There was a gradual failure of the thermal protection near the flap hinge.
During the commentary SpaceX mentioned that they deliberately left some tiles off in that area to gather data on that failure mode. You could see the bright spot during reentry on that portion of the flap and I saw another hexagon tile come off.
To see full video feeds of a space craft reentering the atmosphere was amazing. Where as IFT3's feed stopped about 10km up, IFT4 transmitted images on the booster and the ship all the way down to the ocean. The ship came down in darkness until the engines lit up
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That's not quite correct. Yes, they left some tiles off, but that was in the aft skirt area [youtu.be]. A loss of tiles there would not compromise the integrity of the spacecraft, because the only thing inside the aft skirt are the engine bells. They most definitely did no
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Not sure I'd say that. If the tanks get compromised, that's game-over. As we demonstrably saw, some holes in the flaps aren't a game-over scenario.
Definitely a challenging area to insulate, though!
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That's not quite correct. Yes, they left some tiles off, but that was in the aft skirt area [youtu.be].
Ok, thanks for the additional detail.
this site used to be fun (Score:3)
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17
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19 to be more accurate
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yup, those were the days. i'm not sure how it's even profitable now
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Because their total of expenses is "keeping the lights on"
When you don't actually develop software, running a website is cheap.
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That is because some pundits are calling this a PR move, instantly dismissing hundreds of man-years of effort.
We will beg for our freedom to be taken away, despite the fact that literally everyone wants Freedom (if only for themselves).
This is incredible. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know there's a lot of anti-hype around SpaceX now. Our news station, up until today, still insists that "SpaceX has yet to reach orbit." Never mind the Falcons, I guess. But I just want to say that little kid that was promised a bright space future is jumping up and down on his bed screaming, "TO THE MOON!" right now. Each new flight for the Starship vehicle is one more step along the path.
The size and scale of this thing is incredible. And then to see it successfully reach orbital, and make it back to the Earth in one piece? It's very exciting for those of us that still enjoy the prospects of humanity giving itself some options other than, "Wait here for the inevitable." I'm looking forward to seeing the next test flights. Come on SpaceX. I don't care that you have an ego-maniac that can't shut his yapper long enough to avoid tripping on it. You're building one of our best paths forward. Keep going.
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Elon is the reason they are working with such urgency. Without that kind of "ego" aka "drive", we'd still be watching money get blasted out the ass of gubmint contractors' rockets every couple of years if we were lucky.
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The only "drive" I see from Elon these days is an obsession with AI and a hatred of "woke". Rockets feel like the middle of his priority list. Electric cars, right near the bottom.
A lot of great staff were attracted to SpaceX, though, that's for sure. If you wanted to be working on inventing the future with respect to space, and were willing to put in long hard hours to do so, it became the workplace of choice - where else was working on such exciting projects at such scale?
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Re:This is incredible. (Score:4, Informative)
Starship on top of Super-Heavy (formerly known as the Big F***ing Rocket) is biggger than a Saturn V. They stopped flying Saturn Vs before I was old enough to plan a trip to watch a launch. And unlike the Saturn V, the plan is to reuse Starship and Super-Heavy, over and over again.
It amazes me how quickly SpaceX went from announcing a plan for Falcon 9 as fully reusable (2005), 9-engine test firing in 2008, successful launch in 2010, testing powered landing with Grasshopper in 2012-2013, to landing the boosters in 2015 and 2016. And now reuse is routine.
I expect Starship and SuperHeavy to make similar progress.
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and make it back to the Earth in one piece?
Well, one big mostly operational piece, and a whole lot of other pieces strewn about the Indian Ocean.
It survived re-entry. But I wouldn't call it complete success when there's holes in the control surfaces that you could throw a baseball through.
A little perspective (Score:3)
It actually WAS a complete success, and in more ways than most realize.
The goals for this flight were: [A] return the booster and land it in the water, and [B] have Starship survive all the way through reentry and then attempt a soft water landing.
The booster lost one engine on the launch, but nevertheless performed its primary job of lofting the Starship. It then performed its boostback burn and successfully reentered the atmosphere with no reentry burn (the previous flight pioneered this and it's a differ
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I've gotten the impression that some folks won't consider Starship a success until it's landed on Mars, then brought somebody home. Each new step that's a little better than the last sees a lot of, "But that's not really success," responses. Our local news, the ones that claimed SpaceX can't reach orbit up until yesterday, are focusing only on the melting fin and saying it's still too dangerous to use. That old space mentality that everything has to be perfect every time, rather than iterate and learn, is r
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I remember all the skepticism when SpaceX started trying to land the Falcon 9 boosters. After just a few spectacular fiery failures, the figured it out. And now it's routine, over 200 re-flights of Falcon 9.
Re:This is incredible. (Score:4, Insightful)
The payload of this mission was data collection; there was no other payload. Exactly what data do you think they didn't get?
In particular, one of the key things they wanted to learn about was how the vehicle would handle reentry - whether it would at all with all of its tiles in place, and how it would react to the loss of tiles - under how extreme conditions would result in mission failure vs. just damage? This was so high on their priority list that they deliberately left off several tiles around the engine skirt, to guarantee that there would be plasma eating away at the steel (in the best location possible).
They didn't omit tiles at the flaps, even though that would have been amazing data, because of the risk of mission failure for doing so. But luckily for them they got that data AND didn't lose the mission.
From a data perspective (the entire goal of the mission), I can't see how it could have gone any better. Massive data collection through every phase of the flight, goals were (probably) met for the next phase of testing (booster catch, deboost of the orbiter), and everything came down gently so it can be analyzed.
The anti-Musk comments are typical envy (Score:2)
It's people who don't know how to make anything have an impulse to destroy the things made by people who do know how to make things.
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I wish I had points to up vote this. The unaccomplished need to STFU. They have nothing to add but their own ignorance.
That's certainly PART of it... (Score:2)
but for some, particularly on the far political left, Musk has done two things that signal he may not be all-in on their One True Religion of leftism... which makes him (to them) a HERETIC. As with many religions, heretics must be ELIMINATED.
His two offenses:
While making Tesla cars and solar panels and powerwalls, etc he has nevertheless honestly responded to reporters and said that we cannot eliminate fossil fuels in the near future and it will be impossible to replace all ICE cars with EVs in the near fut
What's next? (Score:3)
Yay! SpaceX Starship giving us relatively cheap delivery to orbit is moving from speculation to reality!
What's next?
The obvious next thing is to hook up a bunch of starships (or boosters maybe?) into a ring, spin it, and call it a space station with artificial gravity. I see "VAST" and "Voyager Station" articles claiming to be pursuing about that. Reality will be based on how fast SpaceX can build and launch starships and who it sells them to, if anybody. A moon station seems likely too. I know Musk keeps talking about Mars, but that's not a first step, there will be smaller steps before that.
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I will see your Starship habitat and offer:
Some number of Starships held together nose to nose, like the spokes of a wheel
Spin the wheel to produce simulated gravity for the inhabitants
Place a long, nuclear powered spaceship (like the DiscoveryOne from 2001 [wikipedia.org]) where the axle would be
Repeat for as many Starship wheels you can place on the axle
You now have a long endurance, nuclear powered interplanetary vehicle, with simulated gravity living quarters and landing ships, which can travel the solar system and vis
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Nuclear is great for powering internal systems, but it's not so great for propulsion.
You can certainly build a hub with Starships attached nose-in, with rotation for artificial gravity. Design the hubs to stack (also delivered by Starship), and you can build an arbitrarily long column of Starship docks. This can make for a great space habitat. Attach one Starship at the end for propulsion. Design a system to allow transferring propellant between all the docked Starships, and you're in pretty good shape.
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You should read up on current technology advances to see what will be available in the future [nasa.gov]
Nuclear powered plasma drives for long duration burns out perform chemical rockets for interplanetary travel in weeks instead of years
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Mars is what drives Musk and therefore the company. The Moon is just an excuse to get NASA to pay for the development. Likewise with using Starships as space stations. Though that's obviously a good idea, especially once they decide to retire the ISS (and Starship could make doing so a more obvious choice).
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The expectation is that one crew Starship will have a greater pressurized volume than the International Space Station. We will see what additional changes need to be made for long-duration stays in Space. The ISS has its Solar Panels for electricity, and just as important, it's radiators for cooling.
Great and a shame.. (Score:2)
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Would have been nice to have a video of the touchdown, just like it would have been nice to have video of the Lunar Module ascent stage lifting off on Apollo 11, 12, and 14. But the equipment wasn't there. The point of a water landing is that you have a lot of room for error. Putting manned ships out there with photographers and videographers to record the landings defeats that safety feature. And building automated ships to do the same takes engineering effort that was better spent on this test flight
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This was great, but still it's a shame there were no external live images of the booster landing in the water. They knew exactly where it would land as that was part of the test. Same goes for Starship itself..
Give it some time. One of NASA's WB-57 Canberras looks like it was doing a circle right around the main booster touchdown site. Fingers crossed their video is either full released or the best segment make's SpaceX's inevitable Flight 4 wrapup video.
https://x.com/CSI_Starbase/sta... [x.com]
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There was definitely some fake-it-until-you-make-it going on in the early days of Tesla, but they've definitely passed the "make-it" stage quite some time ago. At this point, it's not clear how involved with SpaceX he really is. Gwynne Shotwell clearly runs the show most of the time.
Re:Yawn. (Score:5, Insightful)
He does seem to be hands on with Starship development and whatever my personal opinions of the man is he does still seem to have a passion for it and I think for his value to a company is being involved in the cutting edge stuff. Starship, Neuralink, those are the things pushing the envelopes.
I think Musk operates well in that environment. When it passes that point of a sea change he seems like more of a distraction, IE Tesla doesn't really "need" Musk at this point outside of big picture and figurehead stuff, it seems like when he inserts himself directly into Tesla these day's it's not to the companies benefit (my opinion of course).
Re: Yawn. (Score:2)
He does seem to be hands on with Starship development
He's quite involved with it.
IE Tesla doesn't really "need" Musk at this point outside of big picture and figurehead stuff, it seems like when he inserts himself directly into Tesla these day's it's not to the companies benefit (my opinion of course).
I don't have anything to do with Tesla but I'd still argue otherwise. Regardless of the pundit commentary, he knows what he's doing. People who bet against him typically lose. I mean...shit:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/... [x.com]
Not long ago the pundits said this was impossible. And it happened anyways. Sure, he runs his mouth on Twitter, but so what? Millions of other people do the same thing. I'd probably do the same if I actually used it. I don't need to explain how I already do tha
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Re: Yawn. (Score:2)
And?
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Here is a webpage you may wish to peruse to make your arguments more sound, and uh, logical.
At least it has references to common logical fallacies.
https://www.scribbr.com/fallac... [scribbr.com]
Re: Yawn. (Score:2)
While I'm definitely a serial assassin of characters, I don't believe I've created an ad hominem here unless you're using some kind of vicarious reasoning. Though that's not to say I'm above ad hominems -- in many cases, it's deliberate, but the intent is abstract. What did you believe my intention here was?
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Re: Yawn. (Score:2)
I think he might be saying that Musk's industrial feats don't excuse his public behaviour.
I don't think any sane person believes otherwise. There's always been the concept of separating the art from the artist. Hollywood is apparently mostly full of complete douchebags beloved by their audiences but their neighbors and coworkers can't stand them. In public they present this good guy image but in private they're complete assaholics. Yet they keep their jobs anyways most of the time, rare exceptions being Chevy Chase and Kevin Spacey.
I've never actually met Elon in person, but I'm always around a
Re: Yawn. (Score:2)
The point I think I'm trying to make here is that the majority of his haters can't. I mean just look at these two assclowns:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
Fuck, just look at the discussion here alone. Starship has its first nominally successful test flight, and what happens? Elon haters gotta make sure everybody knows how much they hate Elon.
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Yeah I agree that's over the top for sure but that get's to my point is that the hate for the guy, whather founded or unfounded exists and that's a more recent development, it didn't used to be that way (he always had detractors but nowhere near this degree) and Musk is absolutely within his rights to say "these are my politics, fuck you if you disagreee" but when you choose extremely polarizing political positions and espouse them very publically thats just whats gonna happen today and it's clear that's wh
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Yeah my point basically that a guy who is in fact making world changes we shouldn't also have to be disgusted with the things he says, it doesn't have to be that way. I guess the world we live in but for me it makes these things just a bit bittersweet that everyone can't enjoy because this basically doesn't really want everyone to? Or if he does he's really insisting it has to be on his terms now, and that's just, again sorta sad and unnecessary, this should be stuff we can be united around.
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Me, I have been alive what I will call a long time, because it feels that way to me.
I live in a rural area because that is where I could afford to buy a home.
But that colors my views of current American politics.
Seeing how people treat immigra
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Frankly, having had MANY immigrants here as friends and coworkers, I know the test they have to pass to become Americans and I do not think there are many Americans that could pass that test! They love America so much that they spend months studying to become one of us!
I agree with this and espouse this a lot, like America has a unique superpower of taking people from other cultures and both integrating that culture into our own and making those people American all at the same time, I endearingly call America "The Cultural Borg".
Like a first generation immigrant who has kids, those kids are as almost always as American as either of us, it's just ineveitable, you can't grow up and and not get assimilated. Anecdote but my father in law emigrated from Iran in 80's and he's
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https://safe.menlosecurity.com... [menlosecurity.com]
Yes, I am from the generation that heard this, live.
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Sure but we still do it better. Europe has famously had integration problems, it was all over the place suring the Syrian crisis and is still ongoing and that's not unexpected, European countries have more defined historical cultures and that has led to lower employment and more ghettoization. They are making an effort though since it doesn't come as ingrained as America I would say.
Like the question of "What is American culture" is sorta all over the place, it's kitbashed together but that diffuse natur
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Re:Yawn. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not PR when you literally publish realtime video from a spacecraft you launch from South Texas, all the way through it's splashdown off the coast of Western Australia.
We could see the damn thing being ripped apart by reentry in realtime, and it still made it. That's impressive no matter what you think about Elon, and his major attitude change over the last 4 years.
(Personally, I think he's turned into a repugnant and odious individual, but the guy can hire aerospace engineers.)
Re:Yawn. (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah I think any engineer in the field has to have thought about working for SpaceX, it's just too cutting edge to not want to be involved with and Musk truly sells the "work for me and make history" and he's not wrong in this case.
With Musk's personal attitude to me it's just the most public case of audience capture [neuroscienceof.com] on display today.
Musk's problem these days (Score:2)
"...gradually lost its ability to control its attitude."
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Agreed 100%.
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It's not PR when you literally publish realtime video from a spacecraft you launch from South Texas, all the way through it's splashdown off the coast of Western Australia.
It is ridiculous: Decades worth of engineering and scientific effort dismissed as mere PR. As if absolutely nothing of effect was done. It is a solid tactic and shows how malleable Reality can be in the mind of a human.
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How about "waking up the entire auto industry to realizing that we actually do have the tech to make useable electric vehicles today, by actually doing it"
Dipshit.
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Selling 1.8m vehicles in 2023 (a 32% year-over-year increase) is "failing spectacularly" now?
Just for reference:
Tesla Model Y was the #5 best selling car in the US in 2023 Source [caranddriver.com]
Tesla Model 3 was the #12 best selling car in the US in 2023 (same source)
I would absolutely hate to "fail" that "spectacularly" in any business venture I could come up with.
Dipshit.
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One might argue that these days share prices are derived from popularity more than anything.
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This is a common misconception, and the reason for my post. Market cap is the fraction of the potential value of a company owned by shareholders. Enterprise value is the entire potential value of the company.
Picture that Carmaker A was 99% owned by bondholders and Carmaker B was 100% owned by stockholders, but the two companies were otherwise identical. If they're identical, then they have identical enterprise v
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by, "The ugliest golf cart..." are you referring to that 'truck' that looks like it was designed by a 7 year old? It is pretty damn ugly
I lean to it going down negatively in history, but I like the distinctive styling. So much now is bland and interchangeable. Yeah, I do not have a particularly well tuned car eyeball by any stretch, but show me a pickups from Honda, GMC and Ford from the side and unless I have a truck coach give me hints I would not be able to identy what was what. Perhaps the design convergence is because they are all approaching some kind of universal optimum for functionality. Perhaps it is the same mindset that Ho
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Found the shill
Given that none of us have actually met Elon Musk, and are relying largely on media reports to describe who he is, I am left to wonder who would go to such extremes to expose/smear him...
I would say, look at whose toes he has stepped on
1. Stock short, who bet against Tesla
2. Automobile industry that is unable to compete with EVs
3. Oil industry that would lose a significant fraction of their business when EVs are dominant form of travel
4. Electrical industries that would lose primacy if everyo
Re:I am not a rocket scientist (Score:5, Interesting)
It's been covered many times, by design it's fine for not all of them to light up. An engine doesn't start until everything checks out and with this many engines this could delay flights - to avoid this, they have redundancy.
Re:I am not a rocket scientist (Score:5, Informative)
Another interesting point: there was no way to attempt a re-start of that engine after launch, because it was on the outermost ring of 20 engines. The start-up hardware for those engines is in the launch pad (aka "Stage 0").
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Re:I am not a rocket scientist (Score:4, Informative)
I would imagine that they'll eventually integrate that sort of thing into the rocket as their platform develops.
Reliability can be designed in by allowing failed engines to restart, or by overengineering the number of engines so the mission can succeed with an acceptable number of engines not operating (and perhaps less than 100% throttle if all are operating).
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Personally, if I was going to fly on one of those things, I'd want to see oh, at least a dozen consecutive flights where all engines on both halves of the ship do everything nominally throughout the whole flight profile. Failing/popping-off heat shield tiles and melting-off ship parts also lead to concern.
Free, probably stupid idea. (IANARS): Is th
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Yeah, attempting an in-flight restart of an aborted-start engine could introduce more risk of an engine explosion that damages surrounding engines/fuel pipes etc.
That would depend on the circumstances surrounding the failure. The Apollo 13 controllers opted not to attempt a re-start of the service-module engine because a serious failure of the service module had happened already, and they didn't want to risk a catastrophic one. On the other hand, engine re-starts happen all the time on spaceships, even after failures. For example, the current Starliner mission succeeded at re-starting some of the attitude-control thrusters that had failed before they docked at the I
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Attitude control (RCS) thrusters are totally different beasts than chemical rocket engines. RCS is frequently just nitrogen gas under pressure that gets vented out. It's just a valve that has to open and close.
Full flow staged combustion rocket engines have far more parts and a tendency to become bombs when something goes wrong. And there's piping that goes from the engine back to the explodey liquid stuff.
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Fair enough, but my point stands: rocket engines are re-started all the time. Missions depend on them. A decision to stop using an engine would be based on a well-founded concern that re-starting it would cause damage, not just a failure to ignite on a previous attempt.
The Starliner example was top-of-mind because it happened today. I suppose I could have searched for better ones.
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Mostly I'm thinking about ways that the plasma itself could be redirected away from the last-resort shield tiles. Either aerodynamically (something to bend it away and vortex it away from direct contact w
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Just the opposite. It was originally in the engines, but they moved it into the ground systems, as they didn't need restart capability, and doing so reduced the mass, cost, and complexity of the launch vehicle.
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Why? Seems unnecessary mass and risk to carry it.
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Redundancy in design is a thing.
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It is a fairly well-known failure - it cost the Soviet Union the Moon race.
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The main problem that the N1 had was poor handling of failures, both from a, (failures in one engine spreading to another), and from a software perspective (really dumb responses to engine failures). Combined with the poor engine reliability and it was a recipe for disaster, because failures were basically guaranteed on every flight.
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I wonder about the next step. The height you can build a rocket - and to a degree, a lot of the mass efficiency of the rocket - relates to the thrust density at the base, as slow acceleration means that gravity losses consume your dV, and you have to pay exponentially for dV. You can't just keep scaling up a rocket in all dimensions without increasing the thrust density, because height relates directly to the mass and thus pressure over each square meter of engines that needs to be overcome. So you get t
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And as for the inevitable "why hasn't this been done before", the simple answer is it's only applicable to huge rockets with large numbers of non-gimbaling engines, and we simply haven't had a lot of those. N1 had enough on its plate just trying to get the thing to fly, and Starship is new and still being rapidly iterated. Any others?
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Troll score 0 out of 10. Come on. This one would have been pretty weak even in something like a 2003 Counter-Strike match. Slashdot trolls used to do better. They used to care about their craft.
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SuperHeavy can lose 3 engines at liftoff and still succeed.