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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/16936598

Get up close and personal to a full stack of Starship on the Orbital Launch Mount at SpaceX’s Starbase facility with Elon Musk. Then hear how Starship Flight 4 went when we follow up with Elon after the launch!

  • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksMEnglish
    4·
    5 months ago

    TL;DW highlights:

    Pre-IFT-4:

    • 03:20 Current ships do not have catch points, future ships will.
    • 04:00 Catch point design is a trade off between an inefficient but precise landing with small catch points, or an efficient hoverslam but imprecise landing with beefy catch points.
    • 04:50 Forward flaps move the center of pressure too far forward, and the ship has the tendency to enter engines-first. Current forward flaps are too big. Rear flaps do the main bulk of controlling the pitch. Forward flaps just trim the roll and yaw.
    • 10:30 “If you could have done iterative design on Falcon 9, would you?” “We couldn’t have done Starship without the lessons from Falcon 9.”
    • 12:00 Tower B upgrades: Taller for next gen Starship. Arms will be shorter. Current arms have too much inertia.
    • 13:00 OLM redesign: “More of a flame trench?” “Yeah.” Also, hold-down/launch arms redesigned to reduce risk of binding during liftoff.

    Post-IFT-4:

    • 20:30 Reentry heating was observable from the internal cameras (visible, not IR cameras), but the stainless steel held up.
    • 21:20 Hinge needs to be beefed up on S30. Thicker tiles, thinner the gaps between tiles, better gap filler, tightening tolerances.
    • 22:55 Moving the forward flaps leeward is now a priority for Starship V2. Redesign front support structure.
    • 24:20 “Did all flaps have similar burn-through?” “No. Right foreflap took the most damage.” This was concluded based on how much control authority each flap had. Elon speculates that the tile gaps on the right foreflap happened to be slightly worse than the other flaps. Ship maintained stability, but was not able to steer to pinpoint landing location (off by 6 km).
    • 28:00 Booster landing was accurate enough to attempt tower catch on IFT-5. “You don’t feel like you need to have tower 2 ready before you do that?” “No, not necessarily. We do have replacement parts for the arms. They are a better set of arms.”
    • 29:00 Tower catch attempt contingent on talking it over with the teams. Rarely does Elon drop an imperial decree :)
    • 29:20 IFT-5 profile? Repeat of IFT-4? In-space Raptor relight? Undecided at this point.
    • 29:50 Update on the two rear tiles which were intentionally removed: One had two layers of ablative shielding, the other had one layer. One layer burned through, but two layers didn’t burn through.
    • 30:30 IFT-5 between 30 and 60 days (Elon time :), depending on changes needed to 30.