Sitting through the flight test, it seems like they only got one thing right: they achieved orbit without Starship exploding like the way tests 7 and 8 ended. Pretty much everything else failed. No other goal was achieved.
After a few minutes of countdown hold at the T minus 40 second mark, the booster's mission seemed to go flawlessly. Booster 11 separated successfully at MECO with changes to the hot staging adapter ring apparently working. Once separated, though, the mission intent was to push the booster in reentry modes they've never tested. Different angles of attack and different engine configurations. From the SpaceX Launches page for the mission:
Following stage separation, the booster will flip in a controlled direction before initiating its boostback burn. This will be achieved by blocking several of the vents on the vehicle’s hotstage adapter, causing the thrust from Starship’s engines to push the booster in a known direction. Previous booster flips went in a randomized direction based on a directional push from small differences in thrust from Starship’s upper stage engines at ignition. Flipping in a known direction will require less propellant to be held in reserve, enabling the use of more propellant during ascent to enable additional payload mass to orbit.
After the conclusion of the boostback burn, the booster will attempt to fly at a higher angle of attack during its descent. By increasing the amount of atmospheric drag on the vehicle, a higher angle of attack can result in a lower descent speed which in turn requires less propellant for the initial landing burn. Getting real-world data on how the booster is able to control its flight at this higher angle of attack will contribute to improved performance on future vehicles, including the next generation of Super Heavy.
Finally, unique engine configurations will be demonstrated during the Super Heavy’s landing burn. One of the three center engines used for the final phase of landing will be intentionally disabled to gather data on the ability for a backup engine from the middle ring to complete a landing burn. The booster will then transition to only two center engines for the end of the landing burn, with shutdown occurring while still above the Gulf of America and the vehicle expected to make a hard splashdown.
While watching (and no official reports were out as I started gathering info for this post) it seemed that this set of experiments had just started, when they lost the booster. I'd like to see some sort of list of the intended tests and how much they achieved.
The Starship upper stage will again target multiple in-space objectives, including the deployment of eight Starlink simulators, similar in size to next-generation Starlink satellites. The Starlink simulators will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon entry. A relight of a single Raptor engine while in space is also planned.
The flight test includes several experiments focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site. A significant number of tiles have been removed from Starship to stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle during reentry. Multiple metallic tile options, including one with active cooling, will test alternative materials for protecting Starship during reentry. On the sides of the vehicle, functional catch fittings are installed and will test the fittings’ thermal and structural performance. The entire ship's tile line also received a smoothed and tapered edge to address hot spots observed during reentry on Starship’s sixth flight test. Starship’s reentry profile is designed to intentionally stress the structural limits of the upper stage’s rear flaps while at the point of maximum entry dynamic pressure.
Once ship 35 made orbit, it "just didn't look right." While the engines all stayed on for the full duration required, and the ship made the desired suborbital path, it seemed to barely be in control judging by the animated position of the ship that's shown in the bottom right of the SpaceX video. That's based on telemetry data sent by the ship up through the Skylink network. It seemed to be gyrating back and forth - if not turning complete circles. Slowly at first, then getting faster. I think FT-3 did something similar.
The indicator for the ship's orientation is circled in red, bottom right. This is at 2:16:18 into this video and it was fairly stable at this time. At other times, it was swinging rather fast. It led to loss of ship.
The first major goal was to test the "Pez dispenser" method of putting
Starlink satellites into a desired orbit. Once on orbit, they tried to
open the dispenser door to space and reported they couldn't. After
trying a couple of tests (which sounded like "turn it off and back on again")
they cancelled that test. The next test was to restart a Raptor engine
in space. The spinning, out of control-look seemed to get worse as the
mission continued and restarting the engine was cancelled minutes after they
gave up on deploying the Starlink mockups. At some point, some voice on the
video said that the spinning was due to a pressurized fluid leak.
The podcast I watched was Lab Padre/Spaceflight Now, and one of the crew was
Stephen Clark from Ars Technica. Clark works with Eric Berger the senior
space reporter at Ars and communicated with Berger during the flight. I can't tell who said it but they emphasized that
this vehicle was a 3rd generation Starship with the implication that we need
to get finished with these because we haven't gotten one to work properly.
Success or failure? One goal being met sure doesn't sound like a big success, but I don't know enough about how the rest played out and how many goals SpaceX thinks they achieved. By now you know their line: the purpose of the mission is the data.
It was a successful failure of both parts. Why do I say that? Because SpaceX got beaucoup amounts of data.
ReplyDeleteBit of a hairy launch. But every failure is one step closer to success.
That shot of booster separation was fantastic. Figured would pushed #14 to the max to see what it could take, exactly cause it was a throw away booster, hopefully they got first rate telemetry. Would have loved to see it shut down a hundred foot above sea level and drop, that last RUD off shore produced a pretty spectacular fireball. Maybe camera footage of it giving up the ghost will show up.
ReplyDeleteAwfully tense few minutes there with Ship reaching end of its insertion burn.
Can't speak for them, sure they had reasons, but up to me, I would have said light that single center Raptor, time it so ignition is in concert with orbital direction, or possibly relight all engines, kill 2 birds with one stone, lets try to regain back some flight authority, cause there is nothing to lose folks.
All and all I see it as a successful test flight. Like Elon likes to say, "orbit is hard." Besides these are teething problem flights, while they can afford to stretch things to the max, both Ship and Booster where already outdated versions, their upgrades weren't, so long as data was obtained is what matters most.
Sure was an edge of the seat test flight.
Appears Booster 14 lit all its inner engines simultaneously instead of the center three then the mid ring group. Plus it was under a kilometer altitude before landing burn start. Add in higher landing speed, maybe that was too much thrust for the little guy.
DeleteI like the saying that goes, "when you do something no one has ever done you learn things no one has ever known." No one has ever attempted something like Starship and SuperHeavy - deliver tons to anywhere in the solar system, recoverable, and rapidly reusable?
ReplyDeleteI've never heard that put quite that way. This is an elegance.
DeleteYeah, got to remember that one, its so true, could be SpaceX motto, make a great patch or T shirt.
DeleteSpaceX motto is "Shake it. Break it. Take it to the Next Step."
DeleteThe sad thing the early days of NACA/NASA it was pretty much the same: Make it, Break it, Fix it, Repeat
DeleteThinking about all the metal fabrication goes into making these huge stainless beasts. Because thats what I did for decades, welding and fab work in 304L stainless. Its quite a superb alloy, welds like a dream, with every form of metal joining. It still requires the best talent and level of skill, higher the better. One thing I notice from watching the snippets of their fabrication operations, it appears to me they have forgone much of the standard non destructive testing normally associated with aerospace metal fabrication. I think, they are depending on excellence over all in their process and procedure, establishing robust methods, then creating the process which garners the most consistent reliable quality. Its a HUGE cost savings if what I am looking at is what I believe they are doing, and from a fab perspective if you got the kind of mindset and work ethic from your employees, you can kick serious arse cost savings and labor hours wise. But you must, absolute have to have an environment were every day, every hour, your workforce has a mentality that says it's not going to fail because of me. Because, and this is the serious as a heart attack part, you got one guy or gal, they are having a not so good day upstairs, home base problems, hangover, bad attitude between foreman and welder, its myriad possibilities, or more so you hired a bad egg, snuck past the interview criteria that your culture of anti-fragile positivity is set up to build and nurture, realistically its a hard nut to crack, but doable, the problem here I am trying to convey, is in simplest terms, hidden defects. Particularly when it cones to your employees who are metal joiners, could be induction brazer's, GMAW's, which they have many such welders, the most critical is reffered to as fusion welders, that is the exact AMS term for tig welders, because with tig GTAW, (gas-tungsten-arc-welding), the process never exceeds molten metal temps, unlike wire feed, mig, or GMAW, (gas-metallic-arc-welding), which produces plasma temps as your basically creating a spray arc off the wire as it comes out of the mig tip, and between the base metal spraying together with the filler wire feeding your arc. Big distinctive differences. (part 1)...
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ReplyDeleteThe point is where and how hidden defects are possible, the ways are myriad, so everything depends on the basic ethics of the welder/metal joiner performing a process. It requires utmost focus and concentration is paramount. Given all the potentials for hidden defects on a contraption as large as a Super Heavy booster, and the raft of employees SpaceX is hired, its possible somewhere they are having hidden defect problems. Another issue, (believe you me i seen them all), involves a cukture of thinking, alk it takes is one guy who thinks he does not need to follow exact established process and procedure, its called weld spec's by so and so, those kind tend to like to gather a clique around them, and they will commiserate about how they know better than quality control, or engineers are not needed, I am the greatest welder ever flipped a hood diwn on a weld bead. See, welders se a truly strange breed, lot of big but fragile egos involved, and peer pressure, which most will never admit to exists, but it only takes one guy, though the cliques form up like a force of nature, only remedy is to dimply shitcan them all, out the door. Its sounds like drama, and it is drama, its actually insidious when it forms, it is the greatest source of high defect rates, but furthermore its the source of defects your quality inspections can not detect, kind that is supposed to be defects you as a metal joiner are absolutely trusted not to create, it is why your tested and certified, not so much to see if you are this great welder, but mostly to see if you follow procedure and quality requirements. Critically important where your not say doing radiographic inspection on all your fusion weld joints, or the girl who induction brazes fittings on ends of ridgid tube assemblies, she is grumpy, her baby is sick, she is distracted, and gets impatient, so she skips letting the braze joint sit in the coils, for a good soak to let the flux and braze rings or filler rod wet up properly and sweat into every interface of the braze joint, forgets to tap the assembly while its cooking, so the porosity causing has bubbles are not given a chance to escape the liquid braze filler while the induction coils have everything up at a nice even heat. Hidden defects grow from there, even becoming habitual, because might take very extreme conditions for those hidden defects to show up and fail. See how complex this us, how utterly critical good healthy ethical work habits and especially, a gold standard, truly, personal honesty/integrity/self accountability is concerned. As a metal joiner the whole thing is dependent upon having employees with a work ethic of excellence above all, ( sadly, disgustingly so, thus is the fissure where SKW's infiltrate and converge your operations, they become insidious elements and poison everything, it is a real evil problem today, usually with a converged HR department, then your truly screwed, so hard to get rid of, some instances literally impossible without firing all vlose to your skilled help, i seen it a number of times and its about as ugly a thing as imaginable). Elon just might be having issues similar to my descriptions, because early on they had created a core if really great people, bit production forced them to add maybe less than ideal hires, or their HR department has an incompetent or process/quality ignorant interviewer who lets slip past bad hires. Those hidden defect's are a real sonofabitch. As you can imagine they bite your operations right at the wrong time.
There's a lot in there but just a small reaction or two.
ReplyDeleteFirst, is the " it's not going to fail because of me" mindset. My wife and several other friends worked on the space shuttles and that mindset was very common. Everybody knew it was serious stuff and if they screwed up they could not only kill five or seven really remarkable people but they could put themselves and everyone they know out of work.
Second (and I don't know how to check this) is that I'm pretty sure I've read that all "production" welding - for things that are going to fly - is done robotically. Not that robots can't malfunction and do things wrong, just that they don't have bad days because their kid is sick or that kind of thing. All that ethical stuff, fragile egos, "we don't need no stinking engineers" and so on just can't happen. Which typically means everything is more consistent, inspection/test is more straightforward.
Again, they're doing things no one has ever done before so they're going to learn things no one has ever had to learn.
I hear that, always a heartening thing to know of, it is people like that who help make America great, seriously. Ran a welding course cause of chronic shortage of fusion welders and brazers, it was rare to get across to students how much of their skill sets depended upon mind set, more difficult than the physical aspects of metal joint. I don't know much else personally, from my earliest boyhood, being a welder was my life's pursuit, to be fair its hard to equate the mindset I have with prospects who did not go thru trade school or even consider being in the trade. Lot of caveats here. But when you get an enthusiastic student its such a wonderful thing, and nurturing that is actually a learning experience in itself, in some ways I learned more as an instructor than I ever imagined. Funny that huh?
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