3 ms·
I'm sorry, what? SpaceX are the undisputed champions of re-lighting engines. They've landed orbital rockets 73+ times, each of which involves multiple engine re
by twicetwice 6y ago
I'm sorry, what? SpaceX are the undisputed champions of re-lighting engines. They've landed orbital rockets 73+ times, each of which involves multiple engine re-lights while falling through the atmosphere. Let alone gets it wrong "with regularity" — the Falcon 9 Block 5 is a remarkably reliable rocket.
Anyway, landing Starship involves a bunch of things never before attempted: landing a fully-reusable second stage, landing a vehicle of this size, relighting and running engines during the belly-flop-and-flip maneuver, and flying and relighting full-flow staged-combustion engines. Probably some other firsts too.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoToday's crash was due to failure of one engine to restart. Briz and Fregat Russian upper stages are routinely restarted, with ~ 98 % success, same with Ariane EPS and Chinese Yuanzheng. It's doable, just not for Space-X.
- ubercore 6y agoYou realize the Raptor engine is different from the Merlin used in Falcon rockets, right?
- CydeWeys 6y agoYou're comparing a prototype against decades-old, non-reusable rockets.
- avmich 6y agoBriz and Fregat start much smaller - 20 kN - engines with no time constraints, while Starship re-lights 2200 kN engine and rocket immediately does rotation by 90+ degrees, and time is of essence.
- HarryHirsch 6y agoWhere do thrust and chamber pressure even come into the equation? It's not that the engine exploded, the thing failed to ignite.
- avmich 6y ago> Where do thrust and chamber pressure even come into the equation? Thrust given to show difference in engine scale. Pressure isn't shown - what do you mean? :) The point is that re-light of Briz and Fregat is very different and so hard to compare.