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That was seriously some of the most dramatic television I've ever watched. Video of Starship being melted/torn apart by supersonic plasma, the broadcast stream
by themgt 2y ago
That was seriously some of the most dramatic television I've ever watched. Video of Starship being melted/torn apart by supersonic plasma, the broadcast stream dying multiple times maybe due to ship destruction, then finally back online, peeking through the cracked camera to see the nearly destroyed grid fin STILL ACTUATING. The announcers laughing about the ship being "maybe held together by some nuts and bolts" and then it still pulled off the fucking landing burn!
Absolutely wild and historic.
- mavhc 2y agoYou can tell the ship still exists because the telemetry still updates
- kevstev 2y agoI have never rooted for a flap so hard, and likely never will. I am ready to buy flap merch. The energy of the SpaceX employees gave me goosebumps, this was great, it was hard not to get caught up in it- you know this is the culmination of years of hard work that is mostly theoretical until tests like these.
- mrandish 2y agoYes, Flappy McFlapFin for the win on that flight!
- fifilura 2y agoI think the camera deserves a medal too!
- inglor_cz 2y agoLife is really beautifully unpredictable. When I got up today (Central Europe, so several hours ahead of Texas), I never had an idea that a random steel flap is going to be my new superhero in mere hours. Its tenacity in the face of hellfire was epic.
- ericcumbee 2y agohearing the spacex is half the fun. Its fun to hear them cheer. and then hearing the Gasps and "ooooooh"s and wondering what do they know thats happening.
- rtkwe 2y agoReally wish the camera housing had held up to get a complete video of the fin being eaten away. I wonder if any of the other cameras got good footage too because they stayed on the camera with the obliterated lens for a long time which makes me think the others also fair pretty poorly. There wasn't much to see on the fin cam after the housing broke until right at touch down.
- avmich 2y agoI'd really expect SpaceX to have more cameras, and to have some shielding - maybe so that cameras would get open shields at different points in flight, so they'd be protected before that. We only saw left-back flap, I suspect there's a camera looking also on right-back flap, maybe towards the engines section too. SpaceX is known to have rich telemetry, that would be awesome to see.
- rtkwe 2y agoThey had at least 3 (I think 4 but there were 3 visible at once) different camera's on the upper stage I think they also got destroyed though and the melting fin was the most interesting thing they could show so they just stayed with it. As neat as the idea of different shields is that's a whole extra layer of weight and controls for a non critical thing so I'm not surprised it doesn't happen.
- rtkwe 2y agoI might have been thinking of one of the earlier shots that had some of the booster cameras. There's only ever two views of the upper stage.
- cududa 2y agoCan you please explain how exactly you would heat shield a camera? Like, your suggestion is a box attached to the ship that changes its aerodynamic profile, with an actuator that can be a point of failure/ fly off and hit other critical instruments? They have lots of cameras. Were we watching the same video? The thing got absolutely melted and you’re complaining that you didn’t get a front row seat? 5 short years ago we would get a few frames from the camera on the barge where Falcon 9 landed and that seemed incredible. Just because they’ve accomplished something hard (mostly reliable cameras), doesn’t mean it’s suddenly easy and saying “why didn’t you just put more cameras on it?” comes off as mind bendingly pedantic
- zizee 2y agoA friendly fyi just in case it wasn't a slip of the tongue: grid fins are only on the booster.
- ceejayoz 2y agoGrid fins are only intentionally on the booster. This one just became one accidentally.