The fact the flap kept operating, and the ship didn't break apart due to the heat in the damaged area is a testament to the engineering and build quality of starship.
The fact that the flap kept working even as it was burning says a lot about the robustness of Starship's engineering/ They'll continue to make improvements until everything works.👍👍
Remember that landing the booster means a lot of valuable data for SpaceX, as they'd be able to examine every part of the returned booster. Expecting reliability before catching boosters is thinking about it backwards, in my opinion.
The starship should launch again in closer than 3-4 months from IFT 3-IFT 4 it took around 85 days or less than 3 months. Now since the launch was fully successful , there won’t be a FAA investigation/mishap report, the next prototype has been partially tested and I heard that spacex removed the starship lean off the tower so the flames would do less damage to the orbital launch mount so with these factors it should happen much faster. 6-10 weeks?
Depends, really. They've stated that they intend to have the flap issue solved for the next flight. There are only two scenarios where this happens: 1) They move directly to Block 2. While the first Block 2 ship is indeed being manufactured, it isn't done and would need to undergo the usual suite of tests afterward. 2) They retrofit Ship 30. This vehicle has been done and tested for a while. Making the necessary changes to the fins would take quite a long time. So if I were to judge the situation, I would say that they're really far more likely to proceed with Ship 30 as-is and accept the fact that it will probably have much the same problems during reentry. Otherwise they'd be needlessly delaying their next flight.
I tend to agree. Since I saw nothing in IFT-4 that, with the newly granted FAA exemptions, will trigger a mishap report the IFT-5 license should be a formality and SpaceX could probably get that in a couple of weeks if it really needed to. That leaves repairing launch pad/tower damage and retrofitting any design changes that SpaceX wants to test on the next flight as the limiting factors. With constant improvements to the launch facility resilience I'm hoping that getting the pad ready for the next launch might only be a 4-6 week job this time around. So that leaves retrofitting design updates to ship and/or booster as the critical path (i.e. the maximum delaying factor) for the next launch. Not knowing what SpaceX wants to do there makes it impossible to predict but if it is limited to perhaps very localised changes to flap seals that engineers have already worked out in detail then just maybe we can see the next flight in a couple of months rather than 3-4 months. Another possibility is that with the only major issues (that we know of) being ship re-entry just maybe SpaceX might fly again with no attempt to fix that but instead go for IFT-5 primary mission objectives of some or all of on-orbit Raptor relight, payload bay door testing (the IFT-3 test didn't look 100% convincing), maybe some other on-orbit stuff, perhaps more instrumentation at specific places on the Ship to collect more data as it gets damaged during re-entry, maybe leaving different tiles off to collect data at more points for that experiment, and also having another go at precision booster landing to get more re-assurance before risking an actual catch. Typing all that out I'm now thinking that there are so many objectives that SpaceX could attain even if flying an identical Ship design that again takes severe damage I wouldn't 100% discount the next flight going ahead as soon as the launch facility can be made ready again maybe 6-8 weeks from now (4-6 weeks to ready the pad etc and an extra 2 weeks to allow time for booster cryo, SF & WDR tests).
@@julianfp1952 I'm not convinced that it necessarily takes SpaceX two months to get things ready on their end. We already understand perfectly well that the FAA licenses "miraculously" arrive within about a day of each new launch. That can only mean that the FAA keeps SpaceX updated on when they reckon they'll be done with their paperwork, and so SpaceX shuffles ground activity around to meet that schedule, filling blanks with productive work. If the FAA is faster in any meaningful sense this time, the license could arrive in under a month. There is _nothing_ more important than flight data right now, so I just can't see SpaceX letting the license rot for a month.
I wish they would test a section of airframe using the original Transpirational Cooling idea. It would be interesting to see the Methane consumption rate, the effectiveness in cooling the steel, and whether the pores would be in danger of getting plugged. The question is whether the mass of the extra fuel (or other fluid) required for transpirational cooling is greater than the mass of all those tiles. And another question is if the transpirational cooling system would require more maintenance than fragile tiles.
I would surmise that if they attempt a tower catch, there could be a "blowoff mode" where, if the 'catch doesn't happen within 3 seconds, then the chopsticks open wide and quick and the booster heads seaward to crash on remaining fuel - possibly in salvageable depth water. (Salvageable in the investigation sense, anyway).
@@Jonathan_Corwin true. It takes the Navy like 10 years to build a ship. Whereas SpaceX puts together massive facilities and reusable rockets in a few months.
@@Steve-Richter I suspect if the Starship had to carry and support hundreds of crew, in the middle of a war zone while afloat on stormy seas then it might take a little longer than a few months to build it :)
I really doubt that Starship can return from the Moon without disintegrating, there is a lot of work to do before that test! All the extra energy it receives from TLI will turn into heat in the atmosphere when it returns.
Heat shield problem is going to blow a hole in SpaceX's reliability and turn around goals. Thousands of tiles are single points of failure. Ask the Shuttle program about this
Shuttle failed because it got hit by ice or foam coming off the tank of very cold hydrogen. There is no tank above starship and they don’t have to deal with hydrogen.
SpaceX does not have a good test rig for the development of its heat shield! That is the major take away from this launch. If SpaceX had a good test rig for developing a heat shield, then we would not have seen the catastrophic failure of the thin that we saw on this lunch. SpaceX has had four years or more to be working on the heat shield, but they still don’t have a physical test rig or computer programs that are adequate to predict what is going to happen. Eventually, they will engineer a good shield, but it’s going to be extremely expensive to do so if the only real test has to be actual launches.
Actual launches to the indian ocean is the best and cheapest test rig you can develop. SpaceX isn't afraid to look bad to get the test data they need to get it right.
@@tidan4575 Well, if you are right, then SpaceX has had exactly 4 test of their heat shield. So far, they haven’t been able to examine the results of their test up close by looking at the heat tiles after reentry once. How long do you think it’s gonna take them to collect them off data at oh I don’t know $1 billion a shot in order to get the shield actually right?
@@wbwarren57 first of all the first two tests don't count because a separate system failed first. As for the third, the rocket had no control over it's spin putting the heat shield well past its design limits. (I'm surprised the ship lasted as long as it did before burning up.) The fourth fight test was the heatshield's first true test. They also are running simulations on how things are going to behave and what to expect but they can only go so far with theory. If spacex had the same failure happen a second time from a malfunction of the same system then yeah that IS a problem. But because they rarely make the same mistake twice, I call it a successful failure.
Stoke Space's heat shielding using cryogenic fuel instead of thermal insulation is a huge leap forward in technology but not sure if it could work with the massive surface area of Starship.
This was the original plan, actually. It was abandoned fairly early on, likely due to the excessive amount of "extra" fuel required for re-entry and / or the difficulty of pumping vaporized fuel to the engines.
IFT 1: Starship explodes after liftoff. IFT 2: Starship achives stage sep but SH and SP exploded. IFT3: Super heavey booster makes a fast landing, starship achieves orbit and did a propellent transfer demo for Artemis 3 but disintergrated upon re-entry. IFT 4: Super Heavey booster finally lands softly on water and starship passes through re-entry, but structure was damaged as well as the flaps, (The flap almost broke apart). Look how long we came 1 year later.
Sadly Starship and Starlink will be the zenith of SpaceX's capabilities. I'm pretty sure the company's assets will be nationalized or something once Starship and Starlink satellite production becomes more developed. The capabilities those 2 projects have have too many geopolitical strings attached for them to remain in the domain of a private company. That's my pessimistic prediction.
@@ryelor123 I don't think so. SpaceX is already working with defence on Starshield and there's already defence contracts for Starship. No doubt SpaceX will continue to work closely with the US government and pentagon.
@5:27 "one of the raptors shut off and remain that way for the rest of the flight" That kind of goes without saying because stage zero starts up the outer ring of engines to save weight and so if for any reason an engine shuts off there's no way to restart it in flight.
@@skillfulfighter23 My point is that this superfluous statement is also misleading. He should have simply said that it shut off without insinuating that it's remaining out for the flight duration was a decision by the crew or the flight computer. The inner ring of the Ship and Booster have multiple relight capability, but the outer rings left their "starters" back at the pad. (My understanding is that COPVs perform the original ignition of Booster's center engines independent of Stage 0 at liftoff, but If I'm wrong and there is a linkage I'd be happy to learn otherwise.) My point is that saying "it remained that way for the rest of the flight" is redundant as there does not exist any mechanism to relight the outer ring in flight. i.e. it's like saying "the gravity caused the apple to fall from the tree and it remained there . . " "even if they could attempt to relight it mid flight they wouldn't" Why not? Rocket hardware is know for backups of backups, engineers must decide how much redundancy is possible with the consideration of how much weight penalty it costs. If an engine clears it's initial fault conditions then it would seem that capability to restore an engine mid-flight would add redundancy for the cost of larger COPV payload. Even if re-light carried a higher chance of engine RUD they are already paying the high cost of engine shielding for *every engine* for the purpose of containment. If you know of a *specific* reason why SpaceX would choose not to relight an engine I'd be interested to learn why.
@@snorman1911 those outer engines are stripped down versions of raptor v.2 for weight reduction. they only have the minimum hardware required to work. so they just cant re-light mid flight. they cant even gimble
I vote they catch IFT-5 Booster as well. They aren't worried about Tower build time, they have one spare already. 4 months to replace IFT-2's demo of the pad to IFT3 launch, then 2.5 months to reach IFT4... They are in a low risk scenario, REBUILD:
Remember that no testing can be done without the OLM/OLIT so you would have to add that to the timeline. At that point you’re looking at adding ~1,5 months to it.
Better to user the tower parts they are shipping from Florida to build a catch-only tower further away from the fuel depot. That infrastructure would be harder to replace, and with the infrastructure they have it's easy enough to move a booster from the catch tower to the launch tower, but more likely back to the high-bay first for inspection.
@@jeffanderson-lee1574 While that is a good idea, it isn't a good idea. Making the second tower catch only would result in the newer and improved equipment to be subject to damage. Additionally, it would make adding the OLM later harder, which would delay the timelines for things. It would in general be better to subject the current tower to the damage instead of the newer one, since if the current OLM gets destroyed, it would be easier to make a new and improved design. The tower itself likely will be mostly fine if a superheavy crashes on top.
All rocket engineers around the globe are watching this footage to learn something from this event. Amazing what sX is doing for the mankind to advance in rocket science.
SpaceX has been very transparent from the beginning. Its an excellent strategy to encourage others to compete, and new customers as the prices come down. Its like putting all the car dealers at the same part of town. Everyone wins.
So you should know he was talking about attitude, not geographical location. I searched the best I could but can't find anyone who's done this better than SpaceX? Any input? 😉 Nice try at spin. Better like next time.
All these rockets companies had the same attitude about Falcon 9 re-usability. Now ALL are on the verge of bankruptcy as Falcon will launch 100+ times this year. You’re better off giving Elon the benefit doubt.
@@JesseJames_37 Hes talking about where the ship began its landing sequence. The flip happened when it was supposed to at the correct distances above sea level considering the loss of the inner part of the fin. He mentions the distance being off because that is still an issue obviously.
I think you need them when you're coming back into the atmosphere a little faster. As far as reentries go, this is as slow as they come. And flaps don't require fuel.
Thrusters require fuel. Just enough fuel is saved after the launch burn to power the slow down for rentery…and the death defying final blast of energy to achieve zero G at landing. The flaps use plasma energy to steer…much the same as wings and flaps harvest moving air to sustain flight and steerage in an airplane.
I know nothing about welding but i'm wondering whether a different material such as titanium could be used in the highest risk areas to better maintain structural integrity. It'll give them another 400 deg C to play with.
benefits of stainless steel are high strength at cryogenic temperatures (benefit for flight), bad thermal conductivity (that's a benefit during reentry heating) and it's cheap. titanium is definitely not cheap it's a nightmare to manufacture parts from titanium and i'm not sure about strength at cryo temperatures.
Availability was also a huge factor in the decision. If SpaceX scales up to building a Starship a day, they still won't be consuming a noticeable portion of steel production. If SpaceX tried to buy titanium in those quantities, production could not keep up.
DURING REENTRY, WITH THE THIRD LAUNCH OF STAR-SHIP, HEAT TILES COULD BE SEEN FALLING OFF IN CHUNKS, ON THE FOURTH FLIGHT, I SAW NONE DURING REENTRY EXCEPT FOR AROUND THE FLAPS, DEFINITE IMPROVEMENT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
personally i dont understand why there is not a single person on the planet that got video of the booster or the ship landing or at minimum reentering.
Temperature at reentry max maybe ~ 1650 deg C. SS melts at 1400 deg C. Hafnium ,Niobium, molybdenum etc have higher > 1650 deg C though expensive. Trying these for flaps is not a bad idea. Return from lunar missions will face temperature ~ 2800 deg C SS with teflon ablation may be tried to bridge the gap 1650/ 1400 deg C only on the flaps by ablative gases preventing the SS from melting. But what about the hinges?
This flight, albeit slightly (very slightly) flawed, was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! SpaceX will come through in extraordinary fashion, as per usual. **("nonetheless" inserted wherever) Great Job, SpaceX! Do whatever it takes to get me off this Planet!!!
In theory with the wings... Couldn't they just position them such that the wings are entirely in the wake of the forward edge of the heat shielding? It would obviously mean less aerodynamic control but wouldn't it also mean that the plasma doesn't even touch the flaps hinge or otherwise?
I love learning about the Starship. However when the first thing I hear is an AI greenest voice reading a script someone typed in my view of the video ends. It's just someone taking the easy road harvesting information and letting the computer do all the work. They are only here for the clicks.
Starship is made from (high grade) Stainless Steel which has a higher melting temperature than Steel. Plus, I doubt it will be 3-4 months for IFT 5. I would bet we'll see the next one by 8-30-24
These are very interesting, fact-filled, competently made videos, with one glaring weak spot: _very_ irritating, unnatural TTS narration. Why don't you guys simply read it yourselves?
I need some feedback, guys. I have an idea about the heat shields. Look at a heat shield. Let's call the flat top 12 o'clock. Now, rotate it 90° left or right doesn't matter. Looking at the sheild on end. 25% of the way down and 25% of the way up drill or cast in tunnels about 3mm all the way through. Take a fine braided tungsten wire with fiberglass insolation and thread it through the sheild to the next and so on through all the heat shields. The top of one shield will be lashed to the bottom of the one next to it, and so on. At one end of the wire, there should be a simple spring tensioner that will be covered at the end by a bonded on shield. At the other end, another adjustable spring tensioner. The tension to be calculated after some testing. This tensioner is also ultimately covered by a bonded on shield. I calculated it will be about an additional 400 + kilos. I know they have to try everything first before adding more weight to the ship. But if this works it may be ultimately easier then inspecting and refurbishing the ship after every launch. Good luck, Elon, with the next ift5 launch, and thank you for what you're doing to better mankind.
It needs to be rapidly reusable. Even if it finally works. The additional heat tiles and weight will eat away the payload. Falcon 9 super heavy is a superior rocket. The pace in which they are finding issues will take 15 to 20 launches.😂
Won't making them longer down the side lengths handle the heat better? Considering they've known about this problem a while, this isn't much improvement if wanting to accomplish dozens of landing etc. I'm sure the best engineers are onto it and will resolve the problem somehow? Is it not able to be tested in the lab with simulations or such and try deferent designs to stand up?
I’m just a little curious why do we have to come in so fast? We do not need our heat shield when we go up into space why do we need the heat shield when we come back down? I’ve asked this question a few times and got responses. oh, we will need more fuel to, slow down but if you can take all of the heat shields off, which I’m sure is over 2000 pounds even though they are super light that would be plenty enough fuel just slow down. I’m a little confused why we have to come into the atmosphere so fast we are not in the 60s anymore
Imagine if super heavy had giant baloons to float and to not touch directly the water, if they cant catch with chopstiks it this could work, some kind of mechanism hat sucks a bunch of air quickly to inflate huge floaters
I think the flaps and hinges of Starship will withstand re-entry if they were made from titanium just like the booster flaps. Elon did come up with an eligent solution and that is to simply move them out of the plasma stream above the heat tiles. Currently they are inline with the level of the heat tiles and thus in the plasma flow. So if Elon is correct - and he has the data so should be - then this is a nothing 🍔. I could not see any tiles flying off this time during the ascent of Supperheavey and the entire Starship survived so we all need to see it come back to land so that a full inspection can be carried out on everything. Nothing can be done now Supperheave is on the sea bed.x
The reusability of Starship will not happen with those long reentry times and pronged heating. It's too problematic. Starship needs a significant deorbit burn to get its velocity to a more manageable rate to reduce the time during reentry to reduce prolonged heating. That would help reusability in the long run.
rare L from u saying that it's unlikely they will attempt the catch next time... like come on... reusability is the entire point. They should have attempted it allready
For me who have no degree of engineering or anything but just common sense.. the design is not yet perfect, the problem they have still from day one is, reignite engines, tiles, and the gap between flaps and starship.
Why don't they fabricate big, bespoke single tiles, so they only have to attach a few single pieces, rather than thousands of little ones/ There would be less spots to leak
The content is good, but I find it hard to understand the narrator due to the very flat intonation and robotic nasal pronunciation. I have to concentrate hard. I’m a native English speaker.
@@Vaxter701The next milestones for Ship are have no heat damage and to land at an exact, preplanned location. SpaceX has to examine Starship after it lands to access its condition.
@@Steve-Richter yeah they are gonna do it to an exact spot in water, like they did with the booster, not a barge.... of course I could be wrong but that is what I believe is the plan
More emphasis should be given on material science. A combination of steel reinforced with ceramic tiles which are bonded and formed/manufacture as one .
Oh they'll live with a ship that is almost perfect. They still have to show that the payload door works as intended, and the relight of the vacuum engines. If they lose a few more Ships, so be it. If it still is a big issue after working out those other problems they'll launch full size StarLinks and keep working on recovering the Ship. Falcon9 made a lot of commercial launches before SpaceX successfully recovered the first stage.
@@CESmith Yeah, having the flap hinge burn up isn't going to make NASA or any customers happy. The customer might not care so long as their payload get where it needs to go, after that the problem belongs to SpaceX. Simply put: that hinge burring thing will 100% deny it a crew rating!
@@Raptorman0909 Crew rating won't happen with the current Block 1 prototype anyway. SpaceX are going to perform test launches with test articles that they are already building, and carefully study the ways they fail. They may discover issues that also would affect designs that are under development, maybe early enough to revise said designs without much delay.
@@hermanrobak1285 NASA built the Saturn V and went to the Moon, putting a dozen people on its surface and then returning them safely to Earth -- during all that time how many Saturn V's did NASA lose in flight? Answer = ZERO! So far SpaceX has launched the full stack Starship/Superheavy four times and all four times the rockets were destroyed. The idea that the best way to design a rocket is to just build them until they stop destroying themselves is lunacy!
It was already redesigned before the last launch. They already knew it was going to give trouble. I kinda think they will jump over the next two starships and use the redesigned one the next time
@@Bryan-Hensley That's a lot of scrapping! At least the next flight will use an already built ship with slight modifications. They can experiment with flight profiles with a known quantity.
This design is deeply flawed. Scrap the wings, go with thrusters or go back to capsules. Turns out... space is easy, our atmosphere is a b!tch. A crew watching their monitors would have been terrified. They're 4/0.
Next attempt likely in July and that will probably involve code that has the option to attempt a catch if the computer sees everything looks ok. Humans would be able to abort it too if they see something bad as well.
Rapid reusability is not the same as immediate reusability. Rapid reusability is reusability of the starship second stage within days or a few weeks of a landing. Immediate reusability is flying the second stage on top of a booster and taking off again in just a few hours. I don’t think that immediate reusability is either possible with current materials or prudent with current materials or even necessary! Could someone please tell me the scenario in which you need immediate reusability? Please don’t tell me that you need this for refueling a starship in orbit! If you want to refuel a starship in orbit rapidly, then you send up several tankers one after the other as fast as you can and you don’t wait for one of the tankers to fly back, cool down and get refilled on the ground.
You don't "need" either, both are simply ways to increase efficiency; more mass to orbit with fewer boosters, fewer Starships, and fewer launch facilities.
@@msytdc1577 I agree, immediately usability is not really necessary or wise and would certainly cost a huge amount of money to end Gene. Unfortunately, it seems like Elon wants to continue to promise that the second stage is going to fly down from orbit and land on top of a booster on the tower. Why? What is the purpose of that? How could that possibly be economical or efficient?
I would like to specify that the Starship has some issues with the heat shield of the flap (or fin), which melt and disintegrated live on air. The heat shield of the entire Starship had had no issues, IMO.
They could make massive molds like they do with cars for the heat shield. It would lessen the manufacturing time at the cost of making quick changes but it could be solved with a mold that is maybe just a line piece of sheet metal with a concrete backing that can be formed and destroyed and the sheet metal flatten and reused.
Have they recovered the starship after the ocean splashdown? Seems the burn damage would be very valuable. Wonder hat towing and transort vists would be?
Makes so much sense now. Many companies seek carbon fiber because they wanted light weight, and never taking re-entry into consideration. Once you have to survive re-entry, everything changes and the toughest material become the most suitable.
Rocketlab is using carbon composites for their Neutron first stage. It is only a first stage (lower reentry speed) and they are using a specially formulated carbon composite, which may handle temperatures better than what SpaceX was looking at years ago. But clearly they believe carbon composites are the right choice for their reusable rocket stage. An interesting approach also comes from BlueOrigin, who were at one point exploring a reusable stainless steel upper stage concept for New Glenn, while keeping the aluminum alloy on the first stage.
@@plainText384 Absolutely true that carbon composite is great for first stage that doesn't require atmospheric re-entry. I didn't spent time thinking about first stage when posting the comment. Come to think of it, while stainless is likely not the most efficient choice for first stage, it makes sense for SpaceX in terms of having rapid development and for mass production. Completely different reasons than why it's idea for the second stage. Gotta be cheaper too when you're sharing the same welding equipment, material supplier and staff for construction across both stages.
@@lanzer22 well the first stage will still go through atmospheric re-entry, it'll just be from a much slower suborbital trajectory. But you're probably right about optimizing for cost vs. performance being the reason for choosing steel on the whole rocket.
@@plainText384 I suspect (I'm speculating) that Starship remains shaped by its origin: The Interplanetary Transport System. It has a very large cargo volume, compared to its cargo mass capability. It will be neat for launching very large space telescopes, though. And they should, to redeem themselves for peppering the night sky with Starlink, to the chagrin of many astronomers.
Those metals are harder to work with, and more expensive. SpaceX could not make thousands of them for cheap with those materials. They seriously intend to make ridiculously many Starships, as soon as they can. First major customer: Starlink.
