In a short video released Thursday, possibly to celebrate Independence Day with the world's biggest rocket's red glare, SpaceX provided a highlight video of the most recent test of Starship, Flight Test 4.
During the flight, the first stage of the rocket performed well during ascent and, after separating from the upper stage, made a controlled reentry into the Gulf of Mexico. The Starship upper stage appeared to make a nominal flight through space before making a controlled—if fiery—landing in the Indian Ocean.
The new video focuses mostly on the "Super Heavy" booster stage and its entry into the Gulf. There is new footage from a camera on top of the 71-meter-tall first stage as well as a nearby buoy at water level. The video from the buoy, in particular, shows the first stage making an upright landing into the ocean.
Then the video switches to the mind-blowing video snippets of Starship reentering, with the flaps being melted and breaking apart as it descends, molten metal or other debris obstructing the camera's view until we hear the call out that Starship has shut off its engines after its own splashdown.
The tease comes after all that. The video goes from the splashdown to cheering people at headquarters in Hawthorne, California. The screen goes black for three seconds and then switches to an image looking up into the sky, through Starship's monstrous launch tower at Starbase Boca Chica. Then we notice the two "chopsticks," are spread a bit. The perspective turns to looking at the tower from the distance and it becomes an animation, where we see the booster moving toward the chopsticks. With Starship's first stage descending back toward the launch tower and slowing the title "Flight 5" appears and the video goes black before the booster is caught.
Is it real? Are they going to try to catch the booster in IFT-5? In the talk after IFT-4, Musk had said they'd try to catch the booster next flight. That was repeated recently with the phrase "in the next month."
In a talk last week with local residents in south Texas, Starbase General Manager Kathy Lueders said this attempt might not occur on Flight 5.
The video being released after GM Lueders made the statement sure makes it seem like the attempt is back in consideration.
With how rapidly SpaceX analyzes things, them going from "we're going to catch B5" to "well, maybe not quite yet" works for me. Their ability to parse data and make massive changes right then and then make more massive changes on top of making massive changes is just crazy fast.
ReplyDeleteIt's like watching the evolution of aircraft during WWI, from basically barely able to fly contraptions to metal-skinned monoplanes. From the first tests with early Raptor engines and lots of kablooies to the fun of Flight 4, so much has changed, so many advances and setbacks, yet for every step lost they gain two to three minimum.
Any other launch provider watching their rocket get eaten by heat monsters on live video telemetry would have shut everything down, sat on their hands while analyzing the data, and maybe push out some changes in 6 - 9 months.
What we saw after Flight 4 was crazy. SpaceX, "Eh, that didn't quite work, let's strip off all the existing tile and heat matting and put in a new ablative padding and new super tiles. And get it done in 2 months or less."
Nobody else. Anywhere. Is moving this fast. Everyone else is still setting up the game while SpaceX is doing Nth dimensional chess.
And, SpaceX does all this without batting an eye, as if it was SOP. Which it IS, for them.
DeleteAnd people wonder why SpaceX is #1 in the Space Launch category...
This SpaceX performance is normal to human beings. Lesser performance is due to government/religion (same thing) reducing human performance, by design.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, go for it! If anything is iterative this is it, right there.
ReplyDeleteBet dollars to donuts not only will the booster be caught, but they hover it outside the tips of the arms then gracefully drift it in sideways so the arms have time to close on the booster catch pins. And thats going to be the process, a lateral drift, to mitigate/minimize as much impact to to system in the Z axis, its the only way and method in terms of a rapid repeated catch cycle.
If it was me, using a laser target either on the tower or body of the booster skin, this way they have a zero in the X-Y axis, I mean you could run it like a CNC program, sort of, but its the general idea. Off the shelf with innovative bits an application, they must have targeting down pat after hundreds of successful seriel landings, particularly on a bobbing water born landing pad, look how graceful and so stable the booster is on its final soft water landing.They got this down pat no doubt.
Anon, be advised the length of the booster is the X-axis.
DeleteI saw this post over at Simberg's site, and the comment about Space X migrating to sea launches for grater flexibility caught my attention:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.transterrestrial.com/2024/07/07/fear-uncertainty-and-doubt/
I'm curious as to whether you have any thoughts on the subject...
Back in mid-2020, SpaceX bought a couple of offshore oil platforms with the intent to convert them to launch platforms. They sold them off without much fanfare around the end of '22 concluding they weren't the right thing for what they wanted to do. That was before any of the Starship test flights, and CEO Gwynne Shotwell said they need to understand Starship better before committing again.
DeleteMore here including a link to a longer story on SpaceNews. I wouldn't be surprised if they thought the oil platforms were too small and flimsy.