UPDATE at T+1:06 : Wheee! That was fun!
The best part, if you don’t care about details, is at T+46. You can see plasma coming off the ship as it re-enters the atmosphere. The whole thing has incredible views.
The booster made it all the way to its landing burn.
The payload doors opened, and apparently closed (although it’s not clear from the video if they really closed).
The propellant transfer test completed. No official info on how well it worked, but nothing blew up!
The engine restart test was skipped. My unofficial/amateur guess is that the gas thrusters didn’t have good enough control over the ship to perform the burn, but really we don’t know the reason.
The second stage broke up during reentry while there was a break in communication — so there’s no video of the breakup itself.
Overall, an incredible flight. It got way further than I expected. I’m looking forward to official reports about the flight and what SpaceX will change for the next test.
It seems like the gas thrusters are the next area that needs attention. To my untrained eye, it looked like the ship was rolling more than it should have. The thrusters get their gas from the fuel tanks themselves. The tanks need to vent as cryogenic fuel boils off, and that gas is “reused” to help orient the ship. We should know for sure when the next FAA report is complete.
Can’t wait for the next one!
UPDATE at T+12 minutes: Wow! What an awesome launch! The launch was flawless. Booster separation was smooth. Boost-back burn was perfect. The booster made it all the way to its landing burn, and then the engine re-light for the landing burn failed. Wow, that was fantastic.
The second stage completed it’s initial burn and just opened its payload door as I was typing this. Now the second stage is coasting for a while before it attempts the rest of its tests.
Damn, I wish I could have been there, but the various video feeds are pretty cool. Waiting to see how things progress with the second stage.
UPDATE: As of 8:05 EST, the latest estimated launch time is 9:10 EST as SpaceX tries to clear boats from the keep-out area. Tim Dodd’s (Everyday Astronaut) live stream is a good way to follow what’s happening:
-----—
It’s time for another Starship test flight!
With luck, IFT-3 will be lifting-off tomorrow morning at 8:00am EST from Boca Chica, Texas! (www.space.com/...)
It was a bit painful for me to read the news coverage here and elsewhere after the second Starship Integrated flight test in November. While me and the small community of avid space nerds were celebrating the successful test, mainstream news outlets led with headlines like “Test flight ends in explosion” (AP).
Here I’ll try to get ahead of the mainstream media, and explain why I’m excited about Starship, and try to set expectations about the third integrated test flight (IFT-3).
Why should we care about Starship?
Starship is the largest rocket ever to reach space, and it will (eventually) be fully-reusable. This will radically reduce the cost of access to space.
The Space Shuttle cost about $55,000/kg launched to low earth orbit. China’s Long March rocket costs about $6000/kg. SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy costs about $1700/kg.
We don’t know how low Starship will go in terms of cost, but in the low $100s /kg looks realistic.
Imagine being able to launch the ISS into orbit in two flights, at 1% of the cost.
It’s difficult to predict exactly what benefits cheap access to space will bring to humanity, but microgravity manufacturing has huge potential for biotech and other fields. While it’s unlikely that I’ll ever make it to space, there’s a pretty good chance my kids will.
To me it seems like the future has been on pause for 50 years, and now we’re finally moving forward again.
What to expect, the TLDR version
IFT-3 will blow up. Even if a miracle happens and the mission completes its entire flight profile, the booster and rocket will both crash into the sea.
The chances of both halves making it even that far are slim. The booster has a slightly better chance, as it doesn’t reach orbital velocity, so has less energy to lose before making it back to earth. The upper stage, however, will reach much higher speeds, and will need to slow down in the upper atmosphere using its thermal insulating tiles. Those tiles are known to fall off during launch.
So expect at least one spectacular explosion rather than a controlled crash into the ocean.
Why is SpaceX blowing things up?
So why is SpaceX launching if they know the ship is likely to explode? This comes down to Starship’s hardware-rich development approach.
Traditional space companies have taken a very conservative approach (at least after the ‘60s — prior to that they blew up lots of things too). They model everything very carefully, build everything very carefully, and then launch the final completed ship. This is an expensive and slow process, but often the ship flies perfectly the first time. Just as often, it blows up despite all that care and expense.
SpaceX does a lot of modelling as well, but they’re also focused on reducing hardware costs and speeding up manufacturing. In order to do that, they need to build a lot of rockets. And if they’ve got a lot of rockets sitting around, the best way to figure out where they’ll fail is to fly them.
Both approaches have their merits, and SpaceX is also doing a lot of traditional behind-the-scenes work. This is especially true of the HLS lunar landing system they’re developing for NASA. We know they’ve completed numerous milestones for that project, but obviously they haven’t been sending test capsules to the moon. They’ve been doing computer simulations, mock-ups, and component tests.
Starship, however, has a lot of new technologies that are difficult to model. Good modeling requires data, and data requires experience. That experience is best gained by blowing stuff up.
So what’s success?
In the previous test, Starship successfully cleared the launch pad and survived booster separation. The launch pad remained mostly undamaged — an improvement over flight one. It will be disappointing if flight three doesn’t do at least as well.
Beyond that, SpaceX has three key tests planned for this flight:
- Open and close the payload door.
- Transfer propellant from one tank within the ship to another while in space.
- Re-light its engines in space.
Of those, the propellant transfer test is the most interesting, as it’s part of a research contract with NASA, and also essential for SpaceX’s HLS contract. Refueling on the way to the moon is one of the key new technologies necessary for HLS, and this is a step toward that capability.
If one of the tests passes, then the flight will have been worth it for SpaceX. Two passing would be successful by any reasonable standard. If all three tests pass, then the flight will have been a resounding success.
I don’t expect all three tests to pass. There’s a good chance that something will go wrong with the propellant transfer and Starship will blow up before it gets to attempt the third test. If the payload door opens and the propellant transfer at least starts, I’ll call it a success.
The booster proved it could complete its mission in IFT-2. With luck it will make it a little further back to earth this time, but that’s not on the critical path to anything — there will be lots of time to sort that out later.
So blowing up is OK?
Yup. SpaceX has applied to the FAA for up to nine flights this year. Several of those already have hardware near completion, and a new version with substantial changes to the current ships is already under construction. Hopefully the new version will address the heat tile issue.
If two flights in a row fail at the same point in the test, then I’ll start to worry. If three flights happen without achieving something new, then I’ll legit start to panic. But as long as each flight gets a little further than the previous one, then progress is being made.
Who’s paying for all this?
Mostly SpaceX. There’s no shortage of private investors who’d love to get in on space, and SpaceX has no problem raising capital. It’s potentially very profitable, and it’s more glamorous than investing in regular stocks.
Yes, SpaceX gets contracts from the government, and Starship is part of the HLS lunar landing system. But these are fixed-price contracts that SpaceX won by out-bidding the competition. NASA pays for milestone completions, not for blown-up spacecraft.
But we like hating on Elon!
Sure, go ahead. Elon appears to have lost his mind in recent years, and I have no interest in defending him. But before he went nuts, he founded SpaceX and popularized electric vehicles. Both things I’m extremely happy about. I’m sorry he’s gone over to the dark side, but I’m still excited about space, and about this amazing rocket.