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I wouldn’t classify the re-entry survival problem as icing. But otherwise, I agree with you.
by travisgriggs 3y ago
I wouldn’t classify the re-entry survival problem as icing. But otherwise, I agree with you.
- johnyzee 3y agoYeah, breaking up in-air during re-entry (at 65 km going by last telemetry) seems like a potential big issue to fix.
- tempaway444641 3y agoThe point they were trying to make is that getting up is MVP, getting back down can be figured out later
- dotnet00 3y agoOP's point is that the tests become a bit cheaper and a bit easier to get licenses for since they can get to orbit and can deploy Starlinks. The reentry problems of course have to be fixed, but the FAA mishap investigation will involve fewer delays, just like how Falcon 9 was able to keep flying, attempting landings without having to wait for a mishap investigation to finish every time a landing failed.
- usrusr 3y agoIirc F9 had its main challenge in that final suicide burn. Usually the boosters made it there just fine and then "only" failed to get the parameters aligned just right. Based on what we saw today, the main chokepoint for Starship might be right in that hot reentry telemetry blind spot. Debugging without logs.
- dotnet00 3y agoIt sounded like they might have had flight data recorders on-board which might have survived through reentry with telemetry. If so, they'd have some logs, but yes, figuring out reentry will likely be the main challenge for now, not only is it hard to debug, even getting to it requires everything else to go more or less perfectly.
- smallmancontrov 3y agoWith all the solid state gizmos we have today, is it really that difficult to make a blackbox that can survive serious impact G-forces, especially if it just needs to work and doesn't need to be safety rated?
- DarmokJalad1701 3y agoUnlike with F9, in this case they most probably had high-bandwidth telemetry all the way till the vehicle broke up (if the high-def video stream is anything to go by). So, they probably have a lot more data this time. Even the video can yield information - for example, given that the cameras were mounted on the flaps, they can probably back out the actuation angles from that.
- usrusr 3y agoVideo feed interruption was very much expected, and went through a series of on/off before the final signal. From what we saw in the live presentation, both scenarios are possible: breakup while transmission was up, transmitting as long as latency allows, with hopefully good explanations in the log, or a disconnect from the challenging radio situation in the reentry plasma long before something went wrong. Unless they do find some failure buildup in the logs they did receive, it will be difficult to tell disconnect due to breakup from breakup (long) after disconnect. Gradual signal loss on the receiving side would indicate that it's likely the latter, but I'm not sure a signal loss unrelated to breakup would necessarily be gradual. I'd guess atmospheric properties can change fast at reentry velocity.
- dotnet00 3y agoIn the livestream they mentioned that they lost signal on both Starlink and TDRS simultaneously, which is why they figured it had broken up at that point. They were prioritizing the telemetry over video frames on Starlink, and TDRS can only handle telemetry.
- usrusr 3y agoThanks, must have missed that detail in the stream. Hope they find a good explanation candidate in the data!
- baq 3y agoit's the expected outcome of an imperfect (literally not precisely perfect) reentry. something went wrong. it could be a very minor thing like a stuck valve somewhere. we'll know in the next test if they figured it out.
- DarmokJalad1701 3y ago> Yeah, breaking up in-air during re-entry (at 65 km going by last telemetry) seems like a potential big issue to fix. That's what pretty much every non-SpaceX rocket does today with very few exceptions.
- ta1243 3y agoAnd indeed every spacex rocket. Starship is the second stage -- and a second stage on a F9 burns up in the atmosphere just as much as Starship from IFT3 did. The big things to fix seem to be 1) The roll rates for starship (which prevented the inflight relighting test) 2) The Booster relights, which didn't have enough lighting to soft land. Both of those feel like minor problems. I'm amazed that the propellant transfer demo seems to have worked first time, and of course they managed to get the tihng up there in the first place. The reusability of the Starship part of the system is a much bigger unknown, but that doesn't seem to be necessary for the next launch. Wouldn't surprise me if the next try is by the end of April
- engineer_22 3y agobright side: booster made it all the way to splashdown
- senectus1 3y agohaha, it was travelling at 1100 km/h... Not so much a splashdown but a smashdown :-D
- engineer_22 3y agoto have been a fly on the wall... was surely a site to behold :)
- aeternum 3y agoWhy? Saturn V broke up in-air during re-entry on every "successful" launch as does every ULA rocket.
- johnyzee 3y agoBecause that is their stated design goal for Starship.
- DarmokJalad1701 3y agoAnd you don't need to meet that goal to start launching (risk-tolerant) payloads to orbit during their test flights. Especially with such a hardware-rich development program.
- wongarsu 3y agoThey have a great pipeline for building ships. They want reusability, but for near-term needs like deploying bigger Starlink satellites and their moon lander contract they could probably power through without reentry survival. It would be expensive, but unlike in-orbit refueling not really mission critical
- TMWNN 3y agoMy understanding is that Starship is financially comparable to Falcon 9 on a per-payload basis even if fully expended.
- cryptonector 3y agoIf so that would be amazing.
- dotancohen 3y agoComparable to Falcon 9? Unlikely - they've got three dozen Raptor engines on that thing, which alone account for the entire cost (not price) of a Falcon 9 flight. Maybe it is comparable to legacy launch providers, such as the Deltas and Atlases. But unlikely comparable to a Falcon 9 launch, even considering the larger payload.
- avmich 3y agoIn https://payloadspace.com/starship-report/ https://payloadspace.com/starship-report/ the cost of Falcon-9 launch is estimated as $15M. One Raptor is less than $1M, but full Starship has 39 Raptors. Starship will be much more attractive when it will become fully reusable though.
- dzhiurgis 3y agoYou are launching 8x more payload vs ~15 reuses of Falcon9
- senectus1 3y ago
- DarmokJalad1701 3y agoThey can launch payloads that bring in revenue while working on that problem. There is a good chance they put a bunch of Starlinks on the next flight.
- throwuwu 3y agoExactly, they’ve reached feature parity with large expendable launch systems so they can piggyback paying customers with a high risk threshold (starlink) on flights they’d be doing anyways. Given their cadence this phase won’t last long, they’ll likely achieve at least one successful landing next flight.
- ortusdux 3y agoThey have also been eager to launch version 2.0 starlink satellites, but they don't fit in the falcon fairing. The first couple batches of those would be test articles as well, so I'd be surprised if the next starship launch doesn't a few on board.
- dotnet00 3y agoThey've been launching a version of the v2 sats that do fit in the Falcon 9 fairing and supposedly have all the functionality of the larger versions. The issue is that F9 can only carry ~24 of those at a time, which slows down the pace of expansion a lot.
- ortusdux 3y agoThe new 'Pez dispenser' on the starship is designed for the full sized V2 sats, which are about 2x the mass of the V2 minis.
- gorkish 3y agoYes this would all be true, if it were true. It is likely to become true at IFT-4 but they are very demonstrably not quite where you say they are. This was still a suborbital flight and they cannot do much of anything that is commercially practical on suborbital flights (like launch satellites, even if they raise their apogee). They appear to have not had good control authority in coast and reentry. They did not do a relight/deorbit burn test that is likely an obstacle to tackle before they can make orbital flights. I assume we'll get some confirmation about these things soon enough, but please, you can be optimistic without being hasty.
- bell-cot 3y agoIf their cost per kg to orbit, with total loss of both Booster and Starship, is substantially lower than any of their competitors - then it is success, and recovery is just icing on their profit margins. Er, cake. (And would be very cool marketing and PR, obviously. Not that SpaceX has much need for either of those.)
- avmich 3y agoNo quite; even if 1st and 2nd stages deliver cargo to orbit cheaper than competition, you still has to make sure there is enough demand to pay back the cost of Starship creation. That demand may require not just being cheaper, but to being substantially cheaper than competition, to enable additional uses. What SpaceX is doing with Starlink reminds of the situation with early versions of Windows, when, as Bill Gates described, the industry wasn't keen to produce applications for it. So Microsoft started writing Word and Excel in house. Similarly, SpaceX created Starlink which needs lots of launches, and which couldn't exist with previous level of launch prices, but is able to make profits if the prices are as low as SpaceX can provide.
- cchance 3y agoRe-entry is icing because every other cargo rocket besides falcon, lands just like IFT3 lol
- imtringued 3y agoArtemis 5 only needs three New Glenn rockets. Artemis 3 and 4 need significantly more Starships.