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> Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time? No. I don't know why, but their plan for second stage is the same as before, go su
by ordu 2y ago
> Anyone know if they plan to relight Starship's engines in space this time?
No. I don't know why, but their plan for second stage is the same as before, go suborbital, reenter, soft splashdown into the Indian Ocean. Hopefully now without flaps burned through.
- russdill 2y agoThe autogen pressurization system for the liquid oxygen tank pollutes the tank with carbon dioxide and water ice. The same thing happens on the booster, but they have systems to manage the issue in place. Presumably they don't want to bother with this step for v1 ships or don't have the mass margin to do so. It's not a problem for the landing as that sources from a separate clean tank.
- cryptonector 2y agoCSI Starbase seems to think that Raptor v3 might stop using oxygen pre-burner gas for oxygen tank autogenous pressurization and use oxygen gas generated by using liquid oxygen as a coolant, like is already done on the methane side. That would reduce a lot of weight for filtering that they have had to add to prevent dry ice clogging of engine oxygen intakes.
- verzali 2y agoI would guess they still need to learn more about the behaviour during reentry. Relighting the engines or opening the payload door could mean they lose proper attitude control like in the 3rd flight, so they get less info from reentry.