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

Gonna try, off tomorrow. But i've been up since 4am and I'm hooped! Its another double splash down so whilst cool its nothing we aint seen before! Will be interesting to see if they have improved starship burn-through on the rear flaps yet? Also be nice for it not to go boom at any point during flight! :cry:
 
I hadn't realised they were doing a banking manoeuvre on this flight, very cool stuff. At first glance without seeing more the landing footage it looked like an absolutely clean flight and landing.
 
Yeah, it looked like a perfect test flight. just a shame they switched to the internal cameras for the dummy starlink deployment. Unless I missed the external views.
 
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Yeah I was in and out of consciousness through-out the stream. I gave up and went to bed before the main re-entry sequence.

Caught back up this morning whilst I had breakfast. Unless there was anything I missed that seemed to be an extremely successful test. I'm wondering though if with that cool banking manoeuvre it effected the accuracy of the landing point as the bouy didnt seem to have the same level of accuracy in covering the splashdown as it normally has, usually get it centre of frame. Sea did look quite choppy mind so conditions might not have been ideal.
 
Malevolence said:
Drone footage of the landing. Never gets old, absolutely spectacular. :cool:

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thats certainly impressive ! re-entry is rather bad for space craft..

my first thought is they must have a rather large amount of data they need to protect from theft which other companies and states would love to get there hands on to jump start their own industry.
 
The Raptor engine seems to be a truly amazing piece of kit you look at how developed it is compared to other similar engines and the rate they produce them. Also the rate they produce StarLink satellites, it's a very well managed production business.
 
some interesting news
eu.usatoday.com

Elon Musk taunts NASA head Duffy after Artemis 3 moon lander move as 'Sean Dummy'

Elon Musk is taking aim at the head of NASA amid news that the U.S. space agency may consider companies other than SpaceX to build lunar landers.
eu.usatoday.com eu.usatoday.com

i can see it back firing on SpaceX.

thee are a few competeters but non seem to be as close as SpaceX? based on last years assement of moon lander projects were even major companies already in the space industry struggled to deliver
 
LostCorpse said:
some interesting news
eu.usatoday.com

Elon Musk taunts NASA head Duffy after Artemis 3 moon lander move as 'Sean Dummy'

Elon Musk is taking aim at the head of NASA amid news that the U.S. space agency may consider companies other than SpaceX to build lunar landers.
eu.usatoday.com eu.usatoday.com

i can see it back firing on SpaceX.

thee are a few competeters but non seem to be as close as SpaceX? based on last years assement of moon lander projects were even major companies already in the space industry struggled to deliver
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As far as I can tell there has been no sight or sound of Starship HLS - just taxpayer contracts being spent delivering tons of steel and a banana to the Indian Ocean or a lovely fireworks display to the Caribbean.

Add in the fact that the contract for HLS was awarded by one person at NASA who subsequently left and got a job at SpaceX and it does make you wonder…
 
honestly i want to bet agaianst you, but theres also a lot of self sabotage going on to get to that point which makes me think your right :/
i desperly hope we are wrong though, and an unmaned rocket will at least make the run
 
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LostCorpse said:
honestly i want to bet agaianst you, but theres also a lot of self sabotage going on to get to that point which makes me think your right :/
i desperly hope we are wrong though, and an unmaned rocket will at least make the run
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I might be being a bit unfair - one might make it there but I’m confident it definitely wouldn’t have made re-entry and landing. It’s barely scraping through Earth’s atmosphere and Mars’ is a completely different kettle of fish.
 
Penfold101 said:
I might be being a bit unfair - one might make it there but I’m confident it definitely wouldn’t have made re-entry and landing. It’s barely scraping through Earth’s atmosphere and Mars’ is a completely different kettle of fish.
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Surely as long as it has enough fuel to slow down mars should be easy, less atmosphere, less heat, less damage during landing.
 
Richard - London said:
Surely as long as it has enough fuel to slow down mars should be easy, less atmosphere, less heat, less damage during landing.
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I'm not sure, I think I've read that the Mars entry is particularly fast and relies heavily on the aerobraking with some late rocket deceleration. The StarShip won't be going into orbit before landing I don't think it can, itt relies on aerobraking for Mars capture.

If in orbit refuelling is achieved in the next 2 years I can see an unmanned StarShip using the 2029 transfer window to Mars which will definitely end in a RUD but should be deeply informative.
 
Richard - London said:
Surely as long as it has enough fuel to slow down mars should be easy, less atmosphere, less heat, less damage during landing.
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Mars is difficult because while the atmosphere is ridiculously thin it can’t be ignored completely, and thus the very different re-entry effects plus the change in control authority make it entirely different to landing on Earth.

While the engineers obviously know this and we’ve been successfully landing there for decades now, how this will translate to something the size of Starship and its flip/burn landing remains to be seen, especially when they specialise in testing by destruction and Mars is a 6-9 month journey each time with the most efficient transfer window every two years.

Mind you; what do I know - I’m not a rocket scientist and I didn’t think they’d be able to ignite 33 rocket engines together like that without the whole thing exploding :D
 
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