Starship’s IFT-4 seemed to go pretty flawlessly (other than a booster engine out shortly after liftoff). Booster 11 and Starship 29 both softly splashed down so it’ll be interesting to see what they try to do with IFT-5.
The ship really took a beating (though it obviously still performed), so I don’t think they’re going to put it through much more for flight 5. It would be exciting if they tried to use the chopsticks for the booster.
Man that was some of the coolest shit I’ve ever seen. That booster hovering over the water was insane and obv the flap burning up and still trying at the end when Starship re-lit was 10/10.
I can’t believe I watched real time HD video of a 20 story building launching to space, take a lap, and re-enter the atmosphere in a fiery plasma apocalypse. Felt like what I imagine watching the moon landing must have been like.
I’d love to know what Starship looked like when it splashed down. The fact that they could relight the engines, flip it up on end and control it enough to more or less gently splash down while retaining telemetry sort of implies that it was pretty much intact, but the fiery apocalypse stuff give different vibes for sure.
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Can you post the vid?
Obv skip to the launch and then fast forward like 40 minutes to the reentry.
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Really incredible stuff. I can’t believe the ship landed with the flap halfway burned off! Successfully bringing the ship back is the #1 most technically difficult part of Starship, so this is a huge success. That said, they really need to bring back a vehicle that’s ready to fly again, not a tattered wreck, so still some work to be done. But I’m very optimistic now that they’re on their way to nailing that.
Like I’ve always “known” that reentering the atmosphere is hot and dynamic but holy shit seeing it in action really is a whole different thing.
I’ve heard that they already had design changes to the flaps and hinges prior to this ready to go on future ships, but yah those suckers look to be a point of contention. How they still had the ability to actuate after melting like that is beyond me.
Seems like the heat shielding on the rest of the ship worked as expected which I assume is positive. That they got the engines to relight suggests heat load was ok there somehow.
About had a heart attack.
https://twitter.com/Space_Station/status/1801043194253127963?t=2ELOfOzR4w1OucSt9O_mKQ&s=19
Not great
China had a bit of an issue during a static fire
They didn’t hold the rocket down, oopsies.
I can say that never happened to me but I can’t say it couldn’t have.
https://x.com/wapodavenport/status/1811084461200531868?s=61&t=CwVKdl7e5GoYqphDmQHrPg
Definitely not great.
Who woulda thought that taking that leaky test ship up there might not have been the best idea.
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Holy guacamole they are still there.
This could very well be the last thing Boeing does related to manned spaceflight. They were already not able to compete on price and this is a complete PR disaster no matter what they do from here. Just hope NASA takes the safe approach and sends up a Dragon capsule to take the astronauts home as the only thing that can make this worse is an accident on re-entry with them on board.
Raptor 3 is freaking beautiful
https://x.com/spacex/status/1819795288116330594?s=61&t=CwVKdl7e5GoYqphDmQHrPg
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https://x.com/cbs_spacenews/status/1820140864586342421
re-assessing what’s the current state of the burn plan. We’re hoping to still keep Tuesday (for capture by ISS), but we’ll re-assess once we figure out what went wrong with the first two burns."
Things just keep getting better for the ISS astronauts.
Holy what the actual fuck if true:
The Crew 9 delay is relevant to the Starliner dilemma for a couple of reasons. One, it gives NASA more time to determine the flight-worthiness of Starliner. However, there is also another surprising reason for the delay—the need to update Starliner’s flight software. Three separate, well-placed sources have confirmed to Ars that the current flight software on board Starliner cannot perform an automated undocking from the space station and entry into Earth’s atmosphere.
At first blush, this seems absurd. After all, Boeing’s Orbital Flight Test 2 mission in May 2022 was a fully automated test of the Starliner vehicle. During this mission, the spacecraft flew up to the space station without crew on board and then returned to Earth six days later. Although the 2022 flight test was completed by a different Starliner vehicle, it clearly demonstrated the ability of the program’s flight software to autonomously dock and return to Earth. Boeing did not respond to a media query about why this capability was removed for the crew flight test.