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

It seems like they keep getting stuck and have to be brought back in and then have another go at ejecting them.
 
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That's a lot of orange, what is it and is that the side with or without the tiles?

Unless it's some sort of insulation, then I'm assuming it's burn marks but that can't be good right, regardless of which side it is, can't be good for rapid reuse I mean

 
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Grim5 said:
That's a lot of orange, what is it and is that the side with or without the tiles?

Unless it's some sort of insulation, then I'm assuming it's burn marks but that can't be good right, regardless of which side it is, can't be good for rapid reuse I mean

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One can build a badass ship but without an effective thermal protection solution, its all for nothing.

Good luck to them in finding a reusable solution but that right there aint it. Correction, that solution there isn't "rapid reuse". Wasn't the shuttle program canned with the heat shield replacement nearly every time being a major factor in its demise?
 
Grim5 said:
That's a lot of orange, what is it and is that the side with or without the tiles?

Unless it's some sort of insulation, then I'm assuming it's burn marks but that can't be good right, regardless of which side it is, can't be good for rapid reuse I mean

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Interesting shot, rewatching the livestream it's clearly the heat shields that we are seeing with the orange marking. It looks remarkably intact. I'm not convinced that's the problem you think it is. It is really difficult to tell but it could be shields glowing from heat. Seconds before the flip you can clearly see the heat shields glowing from the flap camera.

edit: oh and of course that was amazing. A near flwaless flight and re-entry I'd love to know if the flap burn through and shirt damage were caused by areas they deliberately left unprotected.
 
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Well the top flaps don't seem to have issues now but the bottom ones were having burn through now, part of me wondered if that does due to the explosion but it seemed to happen on both sides.
 
PlacidCasual said:
Interesting shot, rewatching the livestream it's clearly the heat shields that we are seeing with the orange marking. It looks remarkably intact. I'm not convinced that's the problem you think it is. It is really difficult to tell but it could be shields glowing from heat. Seconds before the flip you can clearly see the heat shields glowing from the flap camera.

edit: oh and of course that was amazing. A near flwaless flight and re-entry I'd love to know if the flap burn through and shirt damage were caused by areas they deliberately left unprotected.
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Wild Guess: Rather than being heat glow. They may have added a dye to the ablative under the heat shields. to see how the ablative is is wearing during re-entry.
 
So even Scott isn't sure what the orange is, says it could be some deposited material, could be what the tiles look like when the top layer is burnt away (unlikely given we've seen cross sections of old tiles and they are white inside), could be the top layer is burnt away and that white material turns orange from the heat, could even be rust - as strange as it sounds hot gasses can be getting trapped in between and on the sides of tiles and cause corrosion of the exposed steel body releasing large amounts of rust


Scott also isn't sure why the nose was white though this is most likely the top layer of the tiles has being burnt away releasing the white layer underneath. If this is the case then it's likely not to be the same issue for the orange lower down and that orange may just be a chemical process like rust
 
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If you have a look at the StarShip re-entry when it is a few kilometres up and coming down parallel to the ground the lighting is good and you can see clear redness between the heat shield tiles at the transition from shield to plain stainless steel. I wondered if this showed that the redness was coming from under the tiles. Possibly breakdown of an ablative material?

It's inconvenient for me to add a screenshot at present but 1:04:44 is a good example of what I meant. (edit during the flip at 1:06:05 onwards shows it well too)
 
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