SpaceX’s Starship rocket completes test flight for the first time, successfully splashes down
SpaceX’s Starship rocket completes test flight for the first time, successfully splashes down
SpaceX launched a fourth test flight of its Starship rocket on Thursday.
I still can't get over that front flap burning through, being shredded/burned lube on camera and still working when the time came. How did that still work?
Parts of the flap got burned and/or taken away with the airflow but majority of the control surface was left intact leaving enough manouverability to continue the mission. The electric drive obviously survived the reentry and continued operation of the flap and the control software was probably able to adapt to the partial loss of available aerodynamic surface.
In terms of test data this sequence of events was way better than nominal mission flight. Now they know how much surface then can lose and still have a successful touchdown.
I wonder how much was left of it, and I also wonder if the damage was symmetrical on the other side's flaps. As soon as the flames appeared I was sure the whole ship would be lost but it just kept going. How?
I'm not sure it did actually work. When the landing burn kicked in it folded all the way over, so the movement we saw earlier might not have been intentional movement but just the thing moving as the atmosphere was pounding it.
This was the most sci-fi shit I ever saw in my life and it was real, it was a great thing to see. Hopefully next flight it can fly to an actual location and have it land within sight of a fleet of ships.
I expect the flap on the opposite side of the ship experienced a similar level of destruction. Well, that depends on whether the damage occurred because of a general loss of structural integrity because of excessive heating, or if specific localized damage on that flap allowed plasma to penetrate the heat shield, resulting in the damage that we observed. So, general structural failure vs. random damage at that location cascading into a hole in the flap.
Anyways, I am pretty sure that the complete loss of control authority on one of the flaps would be catastrophic. But the movement that we observed seemed pretty deliberate and consistent to what we saw during the suborbital test flights. Especially the unfolding of the flap at the T+01:05:42 mark is EXACTLY what we saw during the high-altitude flights, e.g., see SN8 @ T+6:33 or SN9 @ T+6:18. The forward flaps are folded back at first, and then rotate into a position perpendicular to the surface of Starship. The movement (for IFT-4) is precise, consistent with previous flights, and stops abruptly in the correct position.
I think the control mechanism must have been nackered, but it still seemed to move.
I would not have believed it in a Sci-Fi movie. Having the heatshield failed on the flap for most of the descent, seing the flap burning in flame and still managing to land softly after that !
What kind of plot armor is that ?
It is incredible that the ship survived that and really shows the kind of resilience starship has !
Watching the frontflap work to keep control in the lower atmosphere, lit by something burning out of frame, after seeing a third of it evaporate and get blown off by hypersonic plasma. Beats the supersonic flips flight 1 gave us as the most metal thing I've seen a rocket do