** The Official Space Flight Thread - The Space Station and Beyond **

Potential Starship IFT-9 tonight. Currently looking at a planned 0030 (BST) launch obviously this could be subject to delay/scrub. I'll probably stick about to planned T-0 however if there is any significant delay I'll just catch up in the morning.
Will be interesting to see if they have fixed the explodey plumbing.

 
T-40sec hold. I'll give it 30 min max, but I'm getting sleepy!
Back on count down and hold again. I get the feeling this will be a scrub for today.

**edit** I take that back, we got a launch!

Failed payload door, but Starship still lives, Raptor relight next.

Attitude control loss, doubtful it will regain prior to full re-entry, I'll catch up in the morning.
 
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Booster slammed into the ocean instead of soft landing, payload deployment demonstration abandoned as the door didn’t open, and Starship failed on re/entry due to loss of attitude control.

The program has clearly been Doge’d…
 
Lmao at least people got a great lightshow of the fail re-entry

I know it's supposed to be sad that starship keeps failing, but the fireworks on display of the 2nd stage burning up in the atmosphere is really something else, looks like something from a doomsday movie. It makes me want to go watch the ISS re-entry in a few years
 
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Still moving forward but the loss of attitude control on StarShip was dissapointing but at least it didn't let go during the boost phase. Hopefully we'll get some better shots of the Booster Heavy coming in. I hadn't realised it was on a more aggresive return flight path this time which explains the planned water landing. Obviiously something didn't like the tougher return path and gave up on relight.
 
One thing I’ve just read about which I thought was clever was the blocking off of certain vents from the hot stage ring so that the exhaust from Starship would push the booster in a specific direction on separation, thus saving attitude control propellant when re-orienting the booster for re-entry.
 
3 for 3 losses now with the block 2 Starship.

I wonder if they were lucky to get as far as they did, one of those vacuum engines looked like it was getting some burn through in the accent.
 
XPE said:
3 for 3 losses now with the block 2 Starship.

I wonder if they were lucky to get as far as they did, one of those vacuum engines looked like it was getting some burn through in the accent.
Click to expand...
The Block 1 seemed pretty solid on that element of flight but as they have stretched the propellant tanks and changed the downcomers something isn't as resilient. I know pogoing and slosh have been discussed. A solution already exists but not an optimal one and I think they're struggling to find the more optimum one. It's a shame because I would like to have seen how the new thermal system would perform.
 
PlacidCasual said:
The Block 1 seemed pretty solid on that element of flight but as they have stretched the propellant tanks and changed the downcomers something isn't as resilient. I know pogoing and slosh have been discussed. A solution already exists but not an optimal one and I think they're struggling to find the more optimum one. It's a shame because I would like to have seen how the new thermal system would perform.
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The other part of the recent 3 failures I hadn't considered until I was watching a Marcus House video was that the last 3 boosters all of the same basic design were in mature states of production before LFT-7 failed. I'm going to make a wild guess and that rather than scrap the Starships for 8 and 9 they hoped that they could modify/strengthen them enough to survive to re-entry which is the real goal for Test 7-9. And that a more permanent solution with a redesign of the downcomer assembly is rolled into a later StarShip. A higher risk and more costly approach but quicker. It will beinteresting to hear if something like that was the case.
 
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This one is going to be interesting, whilst it's hard to draw conclusions from that YT vid it looked like the explosion occurred nearer the cone than the engine bay. Also as someone previously said it was during filling not static fire.

Edit: some good speculation from Scot Manly. Interesting thought about it being failure associated with the downcomer, and could be fluid hammer be a mechanism.
 
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Has anyone seen any articles following up on Musk's post asserting COPV failure near the header tanks lead to the ground test failure? Assuming it is a correct assertion it is a very specific and non-systematic failure mode that should be fixable one assumes.

ilovetesla.com

Understanding the RUD of Starship Ship 36: What Happened and What's Next for SpaceX – ilovetesla.com

Explore the details and implications of SpaceX's Ship 36 explosion. Discover what went wrong, SpaceX's next steps, and future advancements led by Elon Musk.
ilovetesla.com ilovetesla.com

Don't know about the quality of the webby above but it does have the Musk Twitter response about COPV which is why I posted it.
 
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