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Starship survives reentry during fourth test flight
(spacenews.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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That was some Columbia-level damage that Starship experienced during reentry, and yet it successfully retained control authority, completed a soft landing, and everything was live streamed. Amazing!
The booster seems to be almost ready for the first catch attempt (depending on the accuracy of the landing).
I wonder to what extent they can retrofit Ship 30 to reinforce the hinge of the flaps, and how long that is going to take? On the other hand, the ship did survive, so maybe they will just repeat the launch without any major fixes, and try a few different things? (Deorbit burn, maybe even suborbital test-mass deployment, or more aggressive tests of the heat shield?)
The next-generation Starship design has less exposed flaps with reinforced hinges already. But is it already in production?
If it's only the on-screen flap that had issues, hopefully that points to a minor fix instead of a major one. I wonder what sort of data they have on this. How many thermal tiles were lost on each flap? Where did the issues start? Are the other flaps alright? Hard things to track.
I don't think loss of tiles was the problem, actually. There were vapor trails in various places which I thought at the time were something venting, but Scott Manley pointed out that they actually look like hot air seeping through the gaps in the hinges. That would have exposed unshielded metal to hot gas, bypassing the heat shield entirely
I'm not sure if it was at the time, but it is now. S33 nosecone was spotted on July 14th, and it has the new flap design. (Smaller flaps, positioned more leeward)