Starship Completes Another Test Flight
Starship Lands in the Indian Ocean
CNN
Keith’s note: I was just on CNN with Wolf Blitzer to talk about today’s Starship test flight.
4 responses to “Starship Completes Another Test Flight”
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Are there any concrete tracking records of what is being learned from flight to flight?
It seems this launch did little to advance the knowledge base over previous flights. It would be interesting to put a cost variable with the verifiable lessons learned from each flight (something NASA should have done also). But as a private company, they likely will hide all such information from the public even though they are partially paying for these flights. This opaqueness will only increase in the future sadly.
They removed over a meter of tiles on each side of the vehicle to better characterize the thermal performance. This area is where the catch pins have to be installed next flight
They also relita raptor on orbit so now they can go orbital next flight
They also pushed the limits of the flaps ability to control the vehicle on reentry, and as I understand it, flew a more aggressive reentry trajectory for both the Starship and booster. Basically, they used an old build for a variety of relatively high-risk tests, rather than risking a more valuable newer build. And the reentry and landing were in daylight this time, allowing observations that weren’t possible with the previous flight.
And of course, the public is *not* paying for these flights.
Why should SpaceX give away their hard-earned secret sauce? NASA pays them for services, not for access to their IP. It’s not like, say, Big Pharma, where much of the cost of R&D is directly subsidized/underwritten by us, the taxpayers, and so ought to belong to us.