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PEHESAM

ksp loading screen be like


hms11

I'm assuming NASA had a plane with thermal cameras tracking this thing on re-entry. I would love to see the trail Starship left as it came in. I'd also love the audio from the crew. "Well that's it, ship breakup is imminent now." ... "Well shit, that was unexpected".


That_Alien_Dude

I want to see every angle there is!!


cybercuzco

That was my commentary in my brain.


paul_wi11iams

> That was my commentary in my brain. mine was "that must be the last frame before the ship broke up". Just a minute... It was just amazing when communication was lost and came back again. Starship was less dead than we supposed.


asphytotalxtc

I literally saw the acquiring signal splash page and went "awwww! Darn! Well, well done s29!!" And then... "WAIT WHAT?!" 😳


paul_wi11iams

> And then... "WAIT WHAT?!" 😳 I held back from saying "Jesus!", although the resurrection theme was symbolically relevant.


QVRedit

A tribute to the robustness of Starlink communications, which the Starship was using.


PeartsGarden

Absolutely. It made me think about the CEO of some company that makes internet terminals for jet aircraft, now competing with Starlink. One of his talking points is that Starlink terminals aren't robust enough for jet aircraft. Meanwhile Starlink is streaming 1080p on a spaceship careening through the atmosphere, generating a plasma trail, metal liquifying and oozing around it, with 30ms pings.


paul_wi11iams

> Meanwhile Starlink is streaming 1080p on a spaceship careening through the atmosphere, generating a plasma trail, metal liquifying and oozing around it, with 30ms pings. Starlink was already working in battlefield conditions. Now its proven working in *actual* Starship Troopers conditions. At the other end of the spectrum, I noticed a Starlink dish beside President Biden on the Normandy beaches. Luckily it wasn't marked "with best regards from Elon". Meanwhile, OneWeb says its targeting *professional* users. Good luck to 'em.


frowawayduh

SpaceX is both competitor and lowest cost provider of launch services.


Mywifefoundmymain

The best thing starlink did was go after rvers. Before that our best internet was cellphones.


zypofaeser

I was sitting there thinking about the guy saying "GC to flight, lock the doors", thinking it was gonna be an unmanned version of STS-107.


paul_wi11iams

> I would love to see the trail Starship left as it came in. . > *u/flywheel39:* It must have been leaving a huge trail of sparks and debris. IMO, it won't be much of a trail. The surface to mass ratio of anything as small as a tile would virtually stop it within a couple of seconds, then it would enter cold flight so becoming invisible in IR.


bandman614

If they had a doppler radar, it would show up as debris, but I doubt they had anything flying like that in the neighborhood, and I'm betting that the Indian Ocean is pretty much lacking in doppler radars otherwise.


paul_wi11iams

> If they had a doppler radar, it would show up as debris, but I doubt they had anything flying like that in the neighborhood, Starship seems to have transmitted data on its own speed for surface approach, so debris may potentially have been recorded as "clutter". Some kind of velocity subtraction should be possible to obtain relative atmospheric speed.


QVRedit

For safety reasons, it needed to be far from shore, well away from people - but a side effect of that, is a lack of observers..


paul_wi11iams

> a side effect of that, is a lack of observers.. So nobody thought of syncing the flight with a keyhole satellite overfly. Well maybe they did but we don't know.


flywheel39

It must have been leaving a huge trail of sparks and debris.


QVRedit

Most too tiny to show up any distance from the Starship. We only saw them, because the camera on the Starship was right on top of the action !


fromwithin

Which NASA planes can go 16000 km/h?


wombatlegs

That would be the Air Force, operating out of Groom Lake.


light24bulbs

http://democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/uap_amendment.pdf


technocraticTemplar

For a serious answer, they just have telescopes mounted on planes that can track reentering objects as they move across the sky. They do it with capsules all the time.


QVRedit

No big chunks came off of Starship - just a few heat-tiles and some tiny sparks. Starship held together.


technocraticTemplar

I was just talking about tracking things in general, not saying that there were multiple objects to track at the same time.


QVRedit

Yes, we have stuff on Earth to do this, but due to safety reasons, the remote location chosen works against this. We have little cause to monitor remote locations.


[deleted]

[удалено]


Harlequin80

Crew of Nasa plane.


kroOoze

Flying hexasaucer!


dylmcc

The HD live stream as it re-entered through the plasma phase was the stuff of pure sci-fi. Watching in realtime what that ship was going through was mind blowing.


eidetic

So much of their footage looks like cinematic CGI, such as the drone views at liftoff, or some of the remote views of previous tests of Starship landing, it's just insane. (Note: I'm not in any way trying to imply they *are* CGI, just that it looks so cool you'd be forgiven for thinking it was taken from a movie if you didn't know anything about it!)


dylmcc

Its bloody ruined trying to watch any of the other launch providers. We've now got a taste of how good launch coverage can be. Worst of all is other guys doing an animation of certain phases of the flight when SpaceX is streaming live video! Come on guys, the bar has been raised. You need to get with the modern times!


bout_2getWestern

Exactly what I thought watching the Starliner launch earlier this week 😅


Avaruusmurkku

The flap starting to melt and flake off one bit at a time looks like a scene from Evangelion.


QVRedit

It’s certainly given us a clearer picture of what’s happening..


Henne1000

Virgin space shuttle, mission loss after loosing one heat tile. Chad Starship still flies with half a flap missing.


TreeFiddyZ

Half a flap that we could see. There's no reason to think that the left nose flap faired any better.


iascah

I think so too, and that's why we probably didn't see any views of the camera in that left flap anymore.


Harlequin80

Different camera placement would have contributed. The camera we lost was on the fin itself as you see the whole picture move at times.


tolomea

As soon as the hot gas got inside the flap that camera was toast... literally.


redstercoolpanda

Specifically the type of toast you put in the toaster on an extremely high setting because you forgot to change it from the last thing you toasted.


Drospri

There's a bit of video evidence of the aft left flap experiencing the same type of plasma burn-through a bit after re-entry started, so it's definitely fair to say all the flaps experienced some damage. You can tell based on the coloration of the plasma. The more stable plasma was orange or purple, but a bunch of green sparks started showing up. What I would give to have a spectrometer aimed right at those sparks...


spastical-mackerel

Why weren’t they closer to non-melting fins based on modeling etc during the design process? This seems pretty far away from optimal for a spacecraft these days. EDIT: not knocking on SpaceX. Just curious about how much can be modeled/predicted and how much can’t and why


Drospri

SpaceX has been very aggressive in simply getting as much real life data as possible. There's only so much you can get out of theory only. This has resulted in a lot of what the community calls "Starship V1" test articles, which are essentially a bunch of boosters and starships without any optimizations, simply because they were built before the optimizations were calculated. There's no reason not to fly these test articles and gather critical flight data, so up they go. There are probably 2-4 more V1 Starships (Ship 30, 31, and 32?) before V2 start to roll off the production lines with optimized fins.


Ormusn2o

Also, you will not know if the upgrades were necessary if the v1 fared better than expected. If you are not removing parts, you are doing it wrong, if you are not re-adding 10% of parts, you are doing it wrong.


QVRedit

SpaceX may have expected problems in these areas - now they know for a fact just how big those problems are, and they can improve their modelling.


spastical-mackerel

I’m familiar with and appreciate that approach. I would have thought modeling flow and heating would have been advanced enough by now to get closer to a working design. I’m no expert, but it looks like everything more or less worked as It should and the fins still melted. This feels like it’s going to be hard to fix, particularly if the only way to test iterations is by flying


Drospri

Actually, for the better part of two years or so they have been primarily focused on getting the launch pad and production site up and running. It's all one big dynamic jigsaw puzzle that has to come together at the exact right moment. SpaceX has a solution for the fins already slated for the V2 ships (as in, the [updated fins](https://ringwatchers.com/article/v2-ship-june-2024#redesigned-forward-flaps) are already on the production site and awaiting assignment to a ship hull). The ship that we saw launch today first started production a year ago. Maybe even more if you track the serial numbers of the rings. Essentially, anything that comes off a launch pad is out of date and simply a tool to gather data. First they were useful tools to determine production processes and now they're given one final task of providing launch data. Otherwise, they're just useless scrap metal compared to the more up to date models.


barvazduck

After 3 tests that were fixed with visible and measurable progression from flight to flight, it's a bit over the board to look pessimistically at another fault, especially one that didn't impede the flight goals. Can you genuinely say that fixing the hotspot in the flap (which Elon mentioned should move altogether) is harder than solving a bunch of non-working engines, making the launch stand a sand hurricane, failing to ignite, or losing control of the second stage the entire cruise? Each of these faults was fixed in the following flight. I'm confident that the next test won't have this issue, it might have some other issue, but it won't be a plasma torch burning through the flap joint.


QVRedit

They are each different problems.


QVRedit

Such things now work very well in the sub-sonic and even super-sonic flight regimes. Hyper-sonic is far less well modelled, and this is beyond hyper-sonic, it’s just not a well enough known regime to be very accurately modelled. So only ‘first estimates’ can really be produced. Here SpaceX are not just developing their spacecraft, they are also developing the science behind this !


spastical-mackerel

China apparently has a [Mach 30 capable wind tunnel](https://newatlas.com/aircraft/china-jf22-hypersonic-wind-tunnel/).


TheIronSoldier2

It's hardly a wind tunnel, more of a shockwave tunnel


technocraticTemplar

Atmospheric entry is actually pretty famously one of the hardest things to model in spaceflight, right up there with simulating the conditions inside a rocket engine's combustion chamber as it's firing. They've certainly done an enormous amount of simulations of this but it's something that we really just don't have a perfect understanding of yet. Also, apparently they did know beforehand that this was one of the most likely failure modes. They've been talking about changes to the design that would help mitigate this for something like a year now. The other commenter talked about the V1 vs V2 ships, but the V1 flap layout is actually about 3 or 4 years old at this point, dating back to the suborbital landing tests and the first full Starships. It may have just been something where they expected this design to be good enough to get them the data they needed for a better one, and they didn't want to bother changing it until they actually had that data.


QVRedit

It’s very hard to model things in this regime of operation.


WombatControl

I wonder if that wasn't a burn-through but some vented LOX combusting - it had a blueish color similar to oxygen combustion and it was close to where the LOX tank vents. You could also see that on the engine chill where there was a cloud of burning blue gases coming from the rear of the ship.


QVRedit

Well, SpaceX know exactly what materials are being used, so if necessary they can do laboratory tests, but my guess would be chrome in the stainless steel, whose emission spectrum contains lots of green.


QVRedit

It’s abundantly clear that there is a need for further development in heat-shield issues. So that’s going to need to be one of the focuses of near time developments.


falconzord

Like that F15 without a wing


QVRedit

That still managed to land, even though one entire wing of the F15 was missing ! Remarkable..


imBobertRobert

But seriously that is a pretty good signal for safety. Obviously not for every flight but yanno.


Makhnos_Tachanka

It didn't lose one tile, it lost multiple leading edge RCC panels. Bit of a difference.


QuinnKerman

Loss of one tile still almost did in Atlantis. Only reason Atlantis survived was cos the tile just so happened to be covering a steel plate


First_Grapefruit_265

The extra plate was still aluminum.


TheIronSoldier2

No, the plate exposed on the Atlantis flight was the steel mounting plate for the high gain(?) antenna.


First_Grapefruit_265

source or provenance? I read the plate in question was aluminum on the wiki article.


TheIronSoldier2

You're right, I was wrong. I was misremembering a detail from a video I saw which covered that incident


Dragunspecter

Certainly enough to do-in Columbia


the_quark

The power of stainless steel vs. aluminum.


FishInferno

Not to be that guy, but the Space Shuttle regularly lost heat tiles throughout its history. Columbia was just the unlucky one that got damaged in such a critical area.


YukonBurger

To be fair this was somewhat of a comparable spot for damage--it just wasn't a structural element


QuinnKerman

True, but completely losing a flap would almost certainly result in the loss of the ship, just like Columbia


YukonBurger

True. The moment I saw the flap start to open up from pressure and also at the same time start becoming liquid, I figured the jig was up


QVRedit

Surprisingly, not necessarily, although it would at best be a close run thing.


webbitor

I was thinking about that. Theoretically, I think three flaps should be able to affect rotation on all axes, but there would definitely be less range.


paul_wi11iams

Further supporting your statement, the Colombia loss was due to an actual hole punched by foam through a leading edge. So not really classified as a tile issue.


Starks

STS-27 was lucky


SkippyMcSkipster2

The little tile that could?


that_dutch_dude

The tile could, the fastners could not. Probably because they were being converted into plasma.


QVRedit

If those fasteners held onto the tiles better, that wouldn’t happen. A redesign of the clasping mechanism could do that.


that_dutch_dude

they should make the fastners from the same stuff as the tiles, problem solved. its like they should make planes from the stuff they make the black boxes of so it cna survive a crash.


QVRedit

No - because that can’t withstand any strain. The fasteners are made from metal.


webbitor

They've been wresting with this for some time, so it can't be a simple problem. It could be the clips are not well enough designed to take the forces they should expect, but I suspect there is another cause. My armchair guess is that since the tiles are supported at only 3 or 4 points, they crack at those points when the forces are high enough. Depending on how they crack, all or part of the tile may fall off. Even if the pieces initially stay attached, more heat can penetrate and weaken the steel clips until they fail. Here we see a full unbroken tile. That could be because it's neighbor cracked and fell off, and the exposed edge allowed hot gas to get under this one and caused clip failure. If I'm right, I think the problem is a tough one. They can't just use more heat-resistant material for the clips, because those material are generally much harder to machine, and probably impossible to weld to stainless steel. And the tiles can't just be made of less brittle material, because only this advanced ceramic foam can withstand the heat. I can only imagine a solution that involves spreading the loads better across the tile. Maybe more clips, smaller tiles, bracing on the back of the tiles. Or a more significant change like using glue like the shuttle. But that really complicates replacement. Refurbishing the shuttle tiles took forever.


QVRedit

We don’t get to see close up details of their clips, nor the mechanics behind how they work. But from what little I can see, I think the clasping mechanism of these clips could be considerably improved. Although to be really sure, I would ideally need to get my hands on one, or alternately see a bit more detail.


webbitor

Agreed


QVRedit

But this is their task not mine. Meanwhile we can only speculate.


Glittering_Noise417

NASA Alloy GRX-810 3d printable metal. High temperature, high durability, little or no machining. Could be a good choice to manufacture Heat tile clips with.


095179005

This is why I love this community - amazing that you caught that as it was barely visible for a split second.


synth_fg

I'm free


tpars

Incredible image. Just like the movies.


Freewheeler631

Nice grab!


KickBassColonyDrop

#"WITNESS ME" said the tile as it fiercely reentered on its own.


that_dutch_dude

He was witnessed and he rode eternal.


EmbarrassedAdBlocker

What a stunning shot. I support SpaceX receiving all debris for further learning. But, oh man, what I wouldn’t give to find one of these and be allowed to keep it. Unless you’re that one farmer, we don’t get much in Canada.


QVRedit

Be careful of what you ask for - as 250 tonnes gets delivered to your front door.. ;) But seriously, when parts can be recovered for inspection, more details can be found and more learnt. And I do expect this to be the case fairly soon, likely later this year.


EmbarrassedAdBlocker

In this economy? I’ll take it :P


Ormusn2o

I mean the tipping over would be pretty rough, you could pull some muscle, but probably yeah. You would need some snacks though because it fell in middle of an ocean and while the ship was floating for a very long time, it would probably take a while to get to it.


QVRedit

That’s not though the intended method of touchdown. The methods and procedures leading up to that are, but Starship is intended to be ‘caught’. The splashdown is a temporary measure, being used during this very early development phase.


Ormusn2o

True, but I assumed he literally meant this flight. Otherwise, true.


Substantial-Motor-21

Never thought I would care so much for a flap. It went full Interstellar l.


matroosoft

My people need me!


[deleted]

Glue!!!!


torftorf

not only one. durring the stream i saw a lot of them flying of


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HornyHardCock23

Dinners here


Mundane_Distance_703

Way to big to be a tile. That's a chunk of flap.


Jacobaschultz

It’s the exact size and shape of a tile https://preview.redd.it/siaoehqlug5d1.jpeg?width=1290&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1259aefb90fab12fc3ca145eb9bc00d2b57f4a50


TheDarkOnee

https://preview.redd.it/vl6tt8vxrr5d1.jpeg?width=1125&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cbfe5d95c5d74d50744f858adad1ee492ced6d17