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Starship – SN9 – High-Altitude Flight Test
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dogma1138 6y agoWell they’ll stick the landing one day but just not today :(
- BatFastard 6y agoI was impressed that they confidently landed it right next to another prototype. I am sure they will stick the landing next time.
- comprambler 6y agoIt is irresponsible and it seems to me that the only reason they risked millions of dollars in prototypes is for media attention. Just because it looks cool is not a reason to do it.
- bodhiandphysics 6y agoThe reason to do it is to speed things up. Spacex is willing to take risks for speed
- Diederich 6y ago> Just because it looks cool is not a reason to do it. I'm pretty certain that 'looks cool' has nothing to do with it. SN10 had to be moved away from the assembly point because SN11, SN12, etc are close behind. They needed the space. Why wasn't SN10 further away? SpaceX is moving fast, and moving these building-sized craft around is slow. SpaceX has a many years of experience in landing rockets. Perhaps more directly, they have a lot of experience in failing to land rockets. To that end, they've use a kind of 'fail safe' methodology, where for most of the approach, the vehicle's trajectory is toward a safe, low-value spot. For example, during the booster return of the CRS-16 mission in 2018, there was a problem, so the booster automatically didn't translate back toward its nominal landing pad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdep0qCmYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFdep0qCmYA In that case, the problem ended up not being severe enough to cause a crash.
- someperson 6y agoSince switching to low-cost stainless steel, SpaceX design philosophy is to rapidly prototype using low-cost materials and assembly line like mass manufacturing ("the machine that builds the machine"). They expect to lose many rockets along the way. They only put 3 raptor engines in there because that's the expensive part. This is in contrast to the SLS where they spend 5 years and billions of dollars designing and building one rocket that's make of break, with the second rocket launching people.
- rafaelturk 6y agooh no!
- reddotX 6y agoboom
- intrepidhero 6y agoThat's a whole new meaning to halt & catch fire.
- rbanffy 6y agoThe lithobraking maneuver was sub-optimal.
- lloeki 6y agoControlled descent into terrain. SN9 knew the ground was where it was, but had an engine mishap preventing power to match control, so I’m debating with myself whether it was CFIT or UFIT. Maybe a superposition of both?
- rbanffy 6y agoI think it was absolutely sure it was in CFIT and then it realized, suddenly, it was actually in UFIT. It was a little more boring than the engine-rich exhaust of SN8.
- usefulcat 6y agoIn this case, it's more like halt OR catch fire.
- djaychela 6y agoIt felt much less eerie as it had commentary this time (and probably because it wasn't the first Starship high-altitude flight), but on the face of it, it looked to be a rougher 'landing' than SN8. I'm sure they got a lot of data from it, but it looked like some of the debris was headed towards SN10 - definitely squeaky bum time then! Can't wait to see this work, though, it really will be a step change for space exploration.
- dgritsko 6y agoYeah - it really looked like they just got lucky with the debris somehow avoiding SN10. I wonder what the reasoning was behind them even having SN10 on the other pad during this launch - surely it would have been safer to just keep it in a hangar until afterwards?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bdamm 6y agoTheir hangars seem to be filling up and I am sure they want to make room for SH1 and SN11.
- samcheng 6y agoThat opening shot with one spaceship launching while the other was still on the pad was priceless, though... and they are iterating so quickly that much of the value from SN10 was already gained in the manufacturing process.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sbuttgereit 6y agoAs others mentioned, space in rocket build area looks like it's to a point where any delay in getting completed test articles to test stands, means delaying construction. I suspect they weren't completely confident when they'd get FAA approval after getting into a full launch cycle and being pretty clearly rebuked (pulling of the TFR and announcement of the scrub by the FAA). So better to get it to the stands so they could move on the fronts they could... but also to be understood... There's probably a cost/benefit calculation here, too: SN15 has been said to be bringing significant design improvements over the current design they're flying, and SN10 is of the older design. SN11 is probably ready or very close to ready for "high-bay" stacking... SN10 was waiting in the high-bay along with the first booster (BN1)leaving really no room for anything else to go in there. SN12, also of the same older design is being pro-actively scrapped right now and SN13, SN14 are also not going to happen so they get to SN15 faster. They have a test article at the launch site (SN7.2) to test a different construction material (3mm think stainless steel vs. the current 4mm). All that said and done... I'm sure they want to get SN10 in the air and would be disappointed by losing it... but they already have their sights fixed on the future it doesn't completely represent.
- ASalazarMX 6y agoThe last seconds looked almost CGI, it's awesome to be witnessing this. Wish I was close enough to feel that spaceship BOOM!
- spyspy 6y agoSeems they're still having problems with their headless tanks given it looked like the 2nd raptor landing fire flamed out immediately, even earlier than the previous flight. I thought they had switched to using COPVs but that either malfunctioned or didn't work as well as expected.
- guardiangod 6y agoLooks like 1 of the engines failed to re-lit during the landing. At least this time 1 of the engines was functioning correctly all the way to the explosion. This is an improvement over SN8 where all the engines failed to re-lit properly.
- CobrastanJorji 6y agoI've plotted a graph with these two data points and predict that it will successfully re-light all three engines in only two more tries.
- gvb 6y agoIt is interesting and informative to compare SN9 to SN8. SN8: https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o?t=6884 https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o?t=6884 SN9: https://youtu.be/_zZ7fIkpBgs?t=704 https://youtu.be/_zZ7fIkpBgs?t=704 With SN8, you can clearly see two engines lighting and burning properly until just before it (crash) lands. With SN9, you can clearly see one engine lighting and burning properly, but the second engine did not light cleanly and did not stay lit.
- zaroth 6y agoI don’t think that’s quite right. With SN8 they ended up with low pressure in the header tank and not enough fuel for the turbo pumps. A so called “engine-rich” burn resulted, which is why there’s a flash of green flame. Total thrust was much lower than spec, hence the hard landing even though both engines ignited.
- dgritsko 6y agoI've been so conditioned by how flawless SpaceX launches have tended to be over the last few years. It's exciting going back to not knowing what will happen during the stream. I'm reminded of the enthusiasm around the early Falcon 9 first-stage landing tests, when folks were attempting to reconstruct individual frames of footage from the first "ocean landings" just to get a small taste of what happened. I'm sure they'll nail this landing before too long.
- bredren 6y agoThe day before the NASA-crewed SpaceX rocket launch, Starship SN4 blew up on the pad in a massive explosion in south Texas. I noticed the news barely covered it, and I thought at the time it might be to avoid casting doubt on the human-crewed launch. https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2020/05/29/watch-spacex-starship-prototype-explodes-on-pad-in-south-texas/ https://www.dallasnews.com/business/technology/2020/05/29/wa...
- Mountain_Skies 6y agoCOVID19 and the riots were the big stories. Without them, doubt the media would have been able to resist the drama of astronauts possibly blowing up by connecting the two different rocket projects.
- ogre_codes 6y agoWe just have to work on that landing "A little bit". Understatement of the day. What's kind of odd is how the video has a weird 80s-90s era sci fi feel. All these years I've thought those special effects were terrible.
- madjam002 6y agoAmazing to witness this, although I must say I preferred the camera angles we had in the SN8 stream. Seeing SN8 flip from a distance was great but with SN9 we had to watch it from underneath.
- Ajedi32 6y agoA bit earlier in the stream they tried to show footage from the rocket but the feed kept cutting out. That's probably why they didn't end up showing video of the engines during the landing like last time.
- madjam002 6y agoYeah :( Although even at the start when they had the feed they only switched between them instead of showing both. IMO Everyday Astronaut has the best video of the landing (https://youtu.be/l4-PwxnJimg?t=16263 https://youtu.be/l4-PwxnJimg?t=16263) - this is similar to what SpaceX had with SN8
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoIt looked like something from the engine fell off during the flip
- Diederich 6y agoAnd that's why you have an assembly line for Starships: https://i.redd.it/dmr9bjhpcee61.jpg https://i.redd.it/dmr9bjhpcee61.jpg (SN9 lacking the RUD symbol in that image of course.)
- marktangotango 6y agoWhat I find odd is: when this thing is operational, passengers are supposed to ride through this "flip to land" maneuver?
- ianai 6y agoWell apparently they’re looking into ways to catch the rocket with a landing arm looking platform. Really I think they need to get those engines to fire in any circumstance. But with N=2 it’s hard to know anything.
- jvzr 6y agoThe catching arm is for the first stage, IIRC Second stage has always been about that flip, be it on the Moon, Mars or Earth
- emilecantin 6y agoThat's for the booster. The goal is to skip landing legs for the booster, as it'll only operate around Earth, so it's "easy" to build infrastructure instead. Starship (the 2nd stage) will always do that flip & land on legs, as it also needs to do it on Mars.
- x3n0ph3n3 6y agoThey sure are!
- rbanffy 6y ago
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoLooked to me like they didn't rotate all the way back to vertical, either.
- elihu 6y agoI think it was the opposite; they rotated past vertical. I'd guess they were probably counting on the vectored thrust of a second engine to halt the angular momentum.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoSure, could be. I'd like a few seconds earlier on the shot that showed the landing pad to be sure.
- stopChanging 6y agododd's stream shows that more clearly https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/status/1356740673953816581?s=20 https://twitter.com/Erdayastronaut/status/135674067395381658...
- dmix 6y agoFrom wikipedia: > Three Raptor engines, including SN49. SN9 has had one cryogenic proof test and six static fires. SpaceX attempted to fly SN9 on 28 and 29 of January 2021, but failed to receive permission from the FAA. During landing, one of the engines failed to ignite successfully, causing another hard landing that destroyed SN9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship?oldformat=true#Testing_Program https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship?oldformat=true... This test was slightly shorter than the previous one (6 minutes, 26 seconds vs 6 minutes, 42 seconds) Next launch is expected within February.
- justicezyx 6y agoAnother hidden advancement by SpaceX/Elon, rocket launching now is way more normal as a business activity. It used to be rocket launch failure is world news worthy; now people feel relaxed watching a giant rocket crash into ground and turned into a splendid fireball. This change in perception from the public, is the most critical change to fundamentally accelerate the progress of space exploration.
- StillBored 6y agoIf you look at ~6:37 or so at the video of the engines it looks like they have a low pressure fire/leak lapping at the outside of the engine. Presumably that is not a good idea since they are running sensors/electronics there? Anyone guess whats going on?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]