When is the Starship orbital launch?

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There’s a ceramic wool wrap under the tiles that the mounting pins poke through. You used to see it on barrel sections sitting outside- before all that was moved into starfactory. There may have been a patch of missing tiles out of view of the camera where the batting/wrap was coming off from.
 
Charles_McG said:
There’s a ceramic wool wrap under the tiles that the mounting pins poke through. You used to see it on barrel sections sitting outside- before all that was moved into starfactory. There may have been a patch of missing tiles out of view of the camera where the batting/wrap was coming off from.
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That makes perfect sense. Thank you! That's exactly what it looks like.
 
Interestingly, I have not seen any comments regarding Stage 0 to see if there was any damage. Post IFT-2, there was some minor repairs and repainting but there was a serious problem with the quick disconnect that had to be redesigned. Does anyone know if there was any damage at all to the launch pad?

2ndly, now that SpaceX has completed a land swap agreement with the Wildlife Refuge and IFT-3 has flown they can now get started on building the second flight launch tower. I presume they might need environmental permits before construction but I expect that to be more of a formality and the foundations to begin shortly. As well will there be either additional piping for the fuel lines or a completely separate fueling and water tank storage system?
 
The loss of attitude control - my guess is either the attitude control system itself failed, or it was overwhelmed by a big gas leak somewhere.

I'm inclined to believe the leak idea but must point out no small thrusters were ever seen firing in the video, which seems really odd. You'd think if attitude control worked at all it would have been absolutely frantic trying to stabilize the ship. Thrusters should've been going crazy.

So I dunno which it was, but I'm sure Spacex already knows. It was a big problem and big problems usually have obvious causes.

On booster 10 - I will guess two different things happened in succession. First, grid fin authority did not work right (hardware fault? PID tuning? Both? dunno). Second, they did not leave enough fuel/LOX to get the job done and it just ran out of fuel.

I did not stay at a Holiday Inn last night so YMMV ;)
 
Lord Rory Gin said:
Question for the brain trust - would the FAA require an incident report and investigation this time around? It seems that booster was mostly successful but with an incomplete engine landing burn (only 1 engine restarted), and Starship probably burned/broke up upon re-entry. No explosions this time around. If no incident report then SpaceX would be free to launch a little sooner?
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Apparently the FAA is considering this to be a mishap and another investigation will be required before the next license. In other words, don't expect another launch to happen quickly, and more likely to be at least another 3 months before IFT-4.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/...nvestigation-into-starship-mishap-2024-03-14/
 
On a re-watch I saw the booster was doing OK until it went thru a cloud layer at 6KM. The instant it passed thru the cloud layer all hell broke loose - definitely a strong change in winds.
 
Lord Rory Gin said:
Interestingly, I have not seen any comments regarding Stage 0 to see if there was any damage. Post IFT-2, there was some minor repairs and repainting but there was a serious problem with the quick disconnect that had to be redesigned. Does anyone know if there was any damage at all to the launch pad?
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Felix Schlang (What About It?) spent a good amount of time with their near camera looking at the OLM after the flight and he kept saying "that doesn't look too bad..." I didn't see any obvious damage at least, in those images.

Speaking of "Stage 0" — I don't remember whether it was Tim Dodd or Felix Schlang that said that the ignition provisions for the outer 20-engine ring on the Booster are built into the Orbital Launch Mount....so it really does contain some parts that would normally be part of the flight hardware. Therefore it deserves to be called "Stage 0".
 
Lord Rory Gin said:
Apparently the FAA is considering this to be a mishap and another investigation will be required before the next license. In other words, don't expect another launch to happen quickly, and more likely to be at least another 3 months before IFT-4.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/...nvestigation-into-starship-mishap-2024-03-14/
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The FAA (and NASA, for that matter) doesn’t consider it successful unless it performs exactly as planned. They would be HELL on L3 certs 😬
 
RocketPro said:
The FAA (and NASA, for that matter) doesn’t consider it successful unless it performs exactly as planned. They would be HELL on L3 certs 😬
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From SpaceX's website:
Super Heavy successfully lit several engines for its first ever landing burn before the vehicle experienced a RUD (that’s SpaceX-speak for “rapid unscheduled disassembly”). The booster’s flight concluded at approximately 462 meters in altitude and just under seven minutes into the mission.

All of the middle ring and the 3 innermost engines were supposed to light and the 3 innermost were supposed to continue burning right through to touchdown. That obviously did not happen as only 3 engines in total were re-ignited. So it may be that any type of RUD, whether it be because of the ship blowing up or because of the FTS being activated, the FAA gets involved. They are going to lead the SpaceX investigation into both the booster's RUD and Starship's failed re-entry.
 
I wonder if any one has any pictures of the Starship reentry burnup. I would think it would be quite spectacular.
 
BEC said:
Speaking of "Stage 0" — I don't remember whether it was Tim Dodd or Felix Schlang that said that the ignition provisions for the outer 20-engine ring on the Booster are built into the Orbital Launch Mount....so it really does contain some parts that would normally be part of the flight hardware. Therefore it deserves to be called "Stage 0".
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That is common to nearly every turbopump-fed liquid first stage built to date, since they were all expendable until Falcon 9 so had no need to relight. No reason to haul whatever machinery you use to get your turbopumps running off the pad. (And ground power is likewise common to all launchers - no need to fly batteries bigger than needed - and ground topoff of cryogens is common to all cryogenic liquid launchers.) "Stage 0" is a nice way of putting all that. I don't know if SpaceX coined that or not. A lot of their jargon is common to the industry, but I'm sure they've added to the lexicon in places.
Lord Rory Gin said:
So it may be that any type of RUD, whether it be because of the ship blowing up or because of the FTS being activated, the FAA gets involved.
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Criteria listed above in post 967 in response to your question about this. :)
Lord Rory Gin said:
They are going to lead the SpaceX investigation into both the booster's RUD and Starship's failed re-entry.
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SpaceX will lead the investigation and report results to FAA for their review and signoff.
Marc_G said:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/...se-into-a-future-of-abundant-access-to-space/

Nice writeup, with as a bonus, a cost comparison to SLS at the end.
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The article seems to be comparing the manifest costs of other launchers with a (very optimistic) estimate of Starship's in-house cost to SpaceX, something of an apples to anvils comparison, especially seeing as SpaceX have passed relatively little of the cost-savings of Falcon 9 reuse on to the the customer. (Avio and Arianespace no doubt make money on Vega, and the SLS contractors are hardly working pro-bono either.) It likewise mentions SLS' ground system costs without considering how much it will cost SpaceX to run at least three copies of the largest and most complex launch tower in history, the largest and most complex tank farms in history, etc.

Ultimately Starship may lower the end-user cost to launch large payloads to LEO (and may greatly lower the cost of rideshares), but that remains to be seen. Its concrete possibility that interests me is the commercial offering of launch for very large payloads. Saturn V, Energia, and SLS were never going to launch anything but government payloads. Starship seems - as the article says - relatively close to being able to offer 100t to LEO, whether it's reusable by that point or not, and I'll be fascinated to see what payloads emerge for it.
 
bad_idea said:
That is common to nearly every turbopump-fed liquid first stage built to date, since they were all expendable until Falcon 9 so had no need to relight. No reason to haul whatever machinery you use to get your turbopumps running off the pad. (And ground power is likewise common to all launchers - no need to fly batteries bigger than needed - and ground topoff of cryogens is common to all cryogenic liquid launchers.) "Stage 0" is a nice way of putting all that. I don't know if SpaceX coined that or not. A lot of their jargon is common to the industry, but I'm sure they've added to the lexicon in places.
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So Falcon-9's TTEB tanks and the means to get that stuff into the 9 Merlin-1D nozzles is onboard the Transporter/Erector and not onboard the Falcon-9 first stage? That doesn't make sense to me, especially given that the center engine on a Falcon-9 first stage may burn as many as four times (for a RTL flight) and three times on a droneship-recovered flight. Two other first stage engines, at least, are also fired twice for an RTL flight and once for a drone ship landing.

Getting the pumps running is one thing though getting the pre-burner lit is pretty much the same problem as getting the main combustion chamber going. The remark Tim Dodd (I'm pretty sure it was him) made was that the ignition means for the outer ring of engines on the Super Heavy booster was in the OLM, but that for the inner 13 it was aboard the Booster itself and that arrangement was new/different for Super Heavy and different from other rockets.

I admit I'm speaking a little beyond my actual knowledge here, so could be wrong (and so could Everyday Astronaut, for that matter) but that was my understanding of the comment — it was around the actual means of ignition.
 
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RocketPro said:
The FAA (and NASA, for that matter) doesn’t consider it successful unless it performs exactly as planned. They would be HELL on L3 certs 😬
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I was pretty sure that regardless of who did the certification, the primary events on an L3 cert flight all had to work properly (ie planned chute deployments happen, no main at apogee, etc.). The hard part would likely be the PDR, CDR, and FRR meetings.
 
BEC said:
So Falcon-9's TTEB tanks and the means to get that stuff into the 9 Merlin-1D nozzles is onboard the Transporter/Erector and not onboard the Falcon-9 first stage? That doesn't make sense to me, especially given that the center engine on a Falcon-9 first stage may burn as many as four times (for a RTL flight) and three times on a droneship-recovered flight. Two other first stage engines, at least, are also fired twice for an RTL flight and once for a drone ship landing.

Getting the pumps running is one thing though getting the pre-burner lit is pretty much the same problem as getting the main combustion chamber going. The remark Tim Dodd (I'm pretty sure it was him) made was that the ignition means for the outer ring of engines on the Super Heavy booster was in the OLM, but that for the inner 13 it was aboard the Booster itself and that arrangement was new/different for Super Heavy and different from other rockets.

I admit I'm speaking a little beyond my actual knowledge here, so could be wrong (and so could Everyday Astronaut, for that matter) but that was my understanding of the comment — it was around the actual means of ignition.
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Good points. I missed that you were specifically referring to ignition, not to startup in general. Re. TTEB, I believe at least some launchers have the tanks on the GSE, but most will indeed probably have some of the plumbing on the first stage.

Re. Falcon 9, it's the first launcher that needed to relight the first stage, as well as one of the few to have so many engines, so it was always going to have a lot more gear onboard, for the reasons you state.
 
boatgeek said:
I was pretty sure that regardless of who did the certification, the primary events on an L3 cert flight all had to work properly (ie planned chute deployments happen, no main at apogee, etc.). The hard part would likely be the PDR, CDR, and FRR meetings.
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Under NAR L3CC, a safe recovery is what matters. If you have a main at Apogee, it must land on the flying field and not go out of bounds or it's not a safe recovery.

Perhaps they changed this but that was what it was when I was a NAR L3CC.
 
Many people on here have a propensity make up rules that do not exist.

"The rocket shall fully deploy its recovery system. An anomalous deployment of the recovery system is not cause for flight rejection if the model descended in a safe manner. It is up to the judgement of the Flight Witnesses whether the model descended in a safe manner."
 
Art Upton said:
Under NAR L3CC, a safe recovery is what matters. If you have a main at Apogee, it must land on the flying field and not go out of bounds or it's not a safe recovery.

Perhaps they changed this but that was what it was when I was a NAR L3CC.
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Titan II said:
Many people on here have a propensity make up rules that do not exist.

"The rocket shall fully deploy its recovery system. An anomalous deployment of the recovery system is not cause for flight rejection if the model descended in a safe manner. It is up to the judgement of the Flight Witnesses whether the model descended in a safe manner."
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I stand corrected.
 
bad_idea said:
Good points. I missed that you were specifically referring to ignition, not to startup in general. Re. TTEB, I believe at least some launchers have the tanks on the GSE, but most will indeed probably have some of the plumbing on the first stage.
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And I just realized that this (the OLM having the means to ignite the outer 20 engines on the Super Heavy booster, not the booster itself) is probably another reason why only the inner 13 were involved in the boost-back burn and that landing burn was supposed to be those same engines, then just the three in the center. Also, the 13 are the ones that can gimbal. It's probably all related.
 
Hi all, kind of a side question for you.

So they changed from hydraulic to electrical TVC. Where does the electricity come from? Big onboard battery banks, onboard generators (what kind? how fueled?)... ???
 
cvanc said:
Hi all, kind of a side question for you.

So they changed from hydraulic to electrical TVC. Where does the electricity come from? Big onboard battery banks, onboard generators (what kind? how fueled?)... ???
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I know this isn’t an answer, but probably the same energy source as powered the hydraulics. An added bonus if a massive boost in efficiency. Hydraulics are great stuff, but hydraulic power units are something like 50% efficient, as opposed to 90%+ for electrics.
 
cvanc said:
Hi all, kind of a side question for you.

So they changed from hydraulic to electrical TVC. Where does the electricity come from? Big onboard battery banks, onboard generators (what kind? how fueled?)... ???
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I would not be surprised if its some form of fuel cell, but I have no idea. But Falcon 9 evidently uses a bunch of Tesla Li-Ion batteries for various stuff so maybe Starship does as well.
 
cvanc said:
Hi all, kind of a side question for you.

So they changed from hydraulic to electrical TVC. Where does the electricity come from? Big onboard battery banks, onboard generators (what kind? how fueled?)... ???
Click to expand...
Almost always batteries in launch vehicles. For such a short duration flight, you want the simplicity of a battery pack charged from the pad until liftoff.
 

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