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If it does make it to the planned apogee, I am curious what percentage of heat shield tiles will remain attached all the way to splash. My uninformed gut tells
by consumer451 4y ago
If it does make it to the planned apogee, I am curious what percentage of heat shield tiles will remain attached all the way to splash. My uninformed gut tells me that this might be a problem area.
- cubefox 4y agoYeah, how the heat shield holds up seems one of the most interesting topics. But they only have very limited options of investigating damages on their first attempt, since they won't recover the upper stage. So they have to rely on sensor data and possibly photo/video. More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore. The heat shield will probably come into focus when they try to recover the upper stage. But initially their focus will be on recovering the lower stage, since it has way more engines, which makes it more expensive.
- consumer451 4y ago> More recent prototypes don't even have a heat shield anymore Is this for a reusable Starship, or just the lunar lander mission for Artemis?
- cubefox 4y agoFor the partly reusable Starship, which will be used for orbital satellite launches well before Artemis 3. It seems they first just go for reusing the lower stage, similar to Falcon 9.