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#2301 2026-05-23 21:49:22
- Void
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- Registered: 2011-12-29
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Re: Starship is Go...
And yet SpaceX makes money on Falcon 9 and Superheavy. Is it possible they do actually do int the right way in the long run?
I am going to accept (For now), that the majority of the problem was that the hot firing caused the booster to have a centrifugal force that fed gas bubbles into the raptors of the Superheavy. NASA will have to do what they do. Actually, at this point it might be good if they tilt to Blue Origin.
The big win on Starship is when it can deliver satellites to orbit. I do hope that they will do a Moonship, but punishing the children that build the dreams is not acceptable to me. It is about continuing even if you do fall off your bike and skin your knees.
The best part is no part, but if it doesn't work maybe, you put something back. Maybe they will. Or maybe they will get the hot staging better figured out and also clean up the Raptor 3.0's a bit.
I am pleased that the dreamers are dreaming and riding their bikes.
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#2302 2026-05-24 09:42:11
- Void
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Re: Starship is Go...
I hope I did not come off as too arrogant in my last post.
I am concerned, but knowing how SpaceX does things, I am hopeful. Remember how bad the first Starship launch was? It appears that this new launch pad did pretty well, so that is a win. Also, the heat shield of Starship seems to have done pretty well this time.
I do like that NASA is involved in the encouragement of things like orbital refilling, but of the important things, the PEZ dispenser of Satellites seems to me to be of most importance. Particularly if it can also do Data Center Satellites.
We need to avoid being hysterical like as happened after Sputnik.
There is a lot of hope, but yes, the raptors seem to have issues.
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Last edited by Void (2026-05-24 09:44:04)
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#2303 2026-05-24 10:43:33
- Void
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Re: Starship is Go...
I am very encouraged about the RVac problem on Starship itself: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/r … ORM=VAMGZC Quote:
Starship Flight 12 RVac Problem during Burning to Space revealed! Final Lading totally Mind-Blowing
YouTube
GREAT SPACEX
24.9K views
The video content indicates that the Hot Firing may have damaged on RVac engine and the skirt of the ship.
An encouraging way to make the RVac more robust without adding a lot of weight back in the form of shielding, is said to be to put a coating on the delectate upper portions of the engine. I presume this would be a sort of ablative coating which may dissipate some of the damaging heat from a Hot Fire gone wrong.
I do not believe that the video addresses the Booster problems though.
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Last edited by Void (2026-05-24 10:47:26)
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#2304 2026-05-25 08:12:33
- GW Johnson
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Re: Starship is Go...
I do not know, but I suspect there was some sort of hot staging problem that induced the skirt damage and the failure of 1 Raptor aboard the Starship second stage. I do not know, but I suspect that the hot staging problem ultimately induced the engine failures seen just after hot staging in the Superheavy booster. Those engine failures occurred somewhere just after it started the flip-around on some engines that were burning for the flip. The second stage rocket blast assists that thrust-vectoring flip-around.
One possibility is that propellants did not stay settled enough during the flip to feed only liquids to the engines. That staging looked "abnormal" to me in the sense that its flip plane was "horizontal" instead of the more "vertical" orientations seen before, measuring "vertical" by where the grid fin was missing.
I do know that they saw grid fin damage due to stage 2 Starship rocket blast in the version 2 hot-staging flights, and I would suppose that the stage 2 rocket blast was supposed to impact the new version 3 Superheavy along where the grid fin was deleted, and not along the "lateral" side where a grid fin actually was located.
The "smoke" around the inoperative vacuum Raptor, and the reddish glows on its bell edge and on the engine bay skirt, of stage 2 Starship, are strongly suggestive of ongoing quite-significant propellant leaks and a near-vacuum-pressure fire of some kind, in that bay. Oxygen might be reactive enough to support a fire like that, despite the near-vacuum conditions.
That last is just speculation on my part about ongoing leaks, but it is supported by their deletion of the restart-in-space experiment. They may not have had enough propellant left after reaching the trajectory, to support both the restart and the landing. It did take a longer burn to reach trajectory on 5 engines. And if my suspicion is correct about a significant ongoing leak, it was dumping propellants overboard all during that longer interval.
I'm unsure about the interaction between hot staging not going quite right, and whatever damage caused what looks like a propellant leak on the inoperative vacuum Raptor. But the transient mechanical shocks and heating may be a little too much. And I know they use a lot of 3-D-printed parts in that engine. That 3-D printed metals technology obviously gets the strength of forged parts, but as best I understand (which may not be up-to-date), still not quite the elongation-to-failure of forged parts. In other words, such 3-D printed parts are more brittle and thus more susceptible to mechanical shocks, than forged parts.
One thing that I am reasonably sure of, is that they need a a way to fully cut off propellant to an inoperative engine, one that failed because of leaking cracks in the feed lines upstream of the pumps. It does not look like Starship can yet do that.
GW
Last edited by GW Johnson (2026-05-25 08:30:40)
GW Johnson
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"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew, especially one dead from a bad management decision"
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#2305 2026-05-25 08:54:04
- Void
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Re: Starship is Go...
I understand that I am your inferior in these matters, but I am thinking that if it as your post speculates then the key is to improve the Hot Staging.
If instead as the Pannikins try to say, one of 33 engines exploded and in cascade fashion, took out other engines, then they could put shielding back onto just the engines that are to be restarted in flight.
I think that might be 11 out of 33???
In that case they only add back 1/3 of the mass they removed by removing the shielding for the engines.
As I understand it, for Starlink, Starship only has to be cheaper than Falcon 9 or better than Blue Origin or others. Starship can host bigger Starlinks, I think I understand.
For Data Centers, I understand that a price less than or equal to $200.00 per kg is needed. So, adding back some of the dry mass of some of the engine shielding may not be a showstopper.
As for utility to the Moon, if refilling is not going to work then they might consider building a Mini-Starship and perhaps it would only need one or two refills. That might give them reach to the Moon.
But I think you would say that it is still early days and we cannot know the final results at this time.
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Last edited by Void (2026-05-25 08:58:43)
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#2306 2026-05-25 18:38:41
Re: Starship is Go...
Looking at the stage separation of flight 12 there was something definitely out of the ordinary. The booster appears to have been blasted on its side by the Starship engines near where the grid fin is. I don’t remember seeing that on the videos of the other stage separations. Usually the ship exhaust only impacts the top of the booster where, presumably, it is reinforced.
See it here in this Scott Manley video at about the 11:30 point in the video comparing flight 11 and flight 12:
I wonder if this could have caused a tank over pressure that could have damaged the booster engines.
Another possibility occurs to me. The view angle blocks the view of the booster around the time when the flame appears on the side of the booster near the grid fin, so you can’t quite tell where the flame originates from. But it actually looks like the flame may emanate from the booster. Slow the video down to see it more clearly. This would mean there is a methane leak from the booster tank. This would be a pretty serious failure if it is the case. But it would explain the flames seen dancing down along the sides of the booster.
Bob Clark
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“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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#2307 2026-05-25 18:47:08
Re: Starship is Go...
Looking at the stage separation of flight 12 there was something definitely out of the ordinary. The booster appears to have been blasted on its side by the Starship engines near where the grid fin is. I don’t remember seeing that on the videos of the other stage separations. Usually the ship exhaust only impacts the top of the booster where, presumably, it is reinforced.
See it here in this Scott Manley video at about the 11:30 point in the video comparing flight 11 and flight 12:
https://youtu.be/2kxanBYTAaY?t=691&si=yynBCm5U-383E3B9
I wonder if this could have caused a tank over pressure that could have damaged the booster engines.
Another possibility occurs to me. The view angle blocks the view of the booster around the time when the flame appears on the side of the booster near the grid fin, so you can’t quite tell where the flame originates from. But it actually looks like the flame may emanate from the booster. Slow the video down to see it more clearly. This would mean there is a methane leak from the booster tank. This would be a pretty serious failure if it is the case. But it would explain the flames seen dancing down along the sides of the booster.
Bob Clark
Old Space rule of acquisition (with a nod to Star Trek - the Next Generation):
“Anything worth doing is worth doing for a billion dollars.”
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#2308 Yesterday 06:37:25
- Void
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Re: Starship is Go...
I looked more at what you described. It looked to me like the Starship was torching the booster from the grid fin all the way up to the engines. Perhaps that did generate a lot of gas bubbles, and they migrated to the engines. The booster in flight 10 has no flames impinging on it.
I wonder why the engines would fire at all when centrifugal forces and gravity would not force bubbles away from the engines.
In my mind it is possible that the Vacuum Raptor was the origin of the misplaced booster departure. But it did not look exploded, and at first the indicators said it was running.
I am sure they have all the data to identify the chicken and egg question. So they should be able to improve the process, I am only a spectator/speculator though.
I think it pays to remember how many flights they did before they could even make a Starship last long enough to re-enter the atmosphere.
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Last edited by Void (Yesterday 06:39:57)
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