A tale of two missions: Starliner and Starship both achieve milestones SpaceX and Boeing both had reasons to celebrate last night: Starship had a successful fourth flight test and Starliner docked with the International Space Station (ISS). However, it was not plain sailing for either company. Starship's Fourth Flight Test SpaceX's Starship yesterday lifted off atop a Super Heavy booster from …
And I would be very, very, surprised if the other flaps weren't equally damaged... hopefully the rear did better, but we don't yet have evidence of that.
Most impressive part for me was just how long the camera lasted, as well as the flap. It presumably retained enough control to do some attitude adjustment on it's way down. But lots of sparks and debris came off it, so curious how much damage it ended up taking.
>> It presumably retained enough control to do some attitude adjustment on it's way down.
Some attitude adjustment? The burning flap didn't look like it broke anythng as far as the mission was concerned (aside from the camera lens) - Starship didn't tumble at all during descent, it flipped itself from horizontal(ish) to vertical and then fell in the sea as planned, with, potentially all flaps severely heat fatigued!
The amount of control authority retained by the machine, in spite of the damage, was IMHO incredible.
The amount of control authority retained by the machine, in spite of the damage, was IMHO incredible.
Yep. It's why I think the other flaps must have survived to maintain control. The post mortem will be interesting though. It's still early days, but despite the damage we saw, it still managed a pretty gentle landing. Curious how what is learned will afftect the design or redesign though.
I'm assuming much of the control is from thrust gimbaling, but I'm sure the flaps play some significant role coming out of the belly flop
No idea! But was interesting to see the way the airflow ate it's way inside the flap and eventually burned through, and yet the flap seemed to respond to control help control the landing. Especially as a lot of that seemed to be at the flap root, where I'd assume the actuators live.
The software must have been compensating for the screwed up aerodynamic control surfaces.
Yep. I amuse myself playing a game called 'From the Depths' which is on Steam and allows for.. agressive physics simulations. It's fun creating Unconventional Flying Objects that rely on PIDs and thrusters rather than control surfaces, and configuring those to cope with instabilities and oscillations. Or I tell my self they're intentional and make my objects more evasive.
The actual flip is mostly thrust controlled, but they do fold in the rear flaps and extend the forward flaps to help get it started.
The vehicle actually went nose down for a while, and that's when I thought it was game over (to be fair, that was the time I thought - there it goes, the damage has finally become too much) but no, it managed to recover that (assuming it wasn't trying to get some lateral velocity)...
That hinge mechanism seems to be amazingly robust. I was sure that flap was going to tear off. I was very surprised to see it still actuating right before splash down.
Flight control software must be very good as well, to compensate for those missing chunks, being able to pull off the flip despite screwed up aerodynamics from the holes.
Glad to see that Starliner did manage to dock. I know a crew capsule isn't trivial, but Starship-level difficult it is not.
"And I would be very, very, surprised if the other flaps weren't equally damaged... hopefully the rear did better, but we don't yet have evidence of that."
Yes, it was impressive how the software compensated for the flap damage, which was spectacular not just to watch live but to actually be able to watch it live! On the other hand, it seems that the engineering and materials science needs quite a bit of work if the planned turnaround schedule is ever going to happen. Lots of tiles fell off on top of the flaps damage and we'll probably not know for some while what other damage might be inside the flap mechanism or the areas exposed by dropped tiles. All that said, it's still a fantastic achievement!
The moment plasma got into that hinge there were going to be tiles coming off.
It really shows one of the benefits of steel over other materials.
Columbia was a different beast, but any Al structure is particularly vulnerable to heating - I doubt that steel would have survived in that case either (not least because it would ever have left the gound), but here... it held together remarkably well.
The same thing was done when developing the Falcon 9 reuse capability. See attempts two and three on the famous blooper reel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32E0OtRm2To
If you can come to a controlled stop just above the water, you can have reasonable confidence you'll do it with a barge underneath, or back on dry land, or in to the chopsticks on the launch tower.
Unlike Falcon 9 boosters, there was no sea platform or barge involved here. SpaceX's plan was to have the upright Starship come to zero velocity at zero altitude on a patch of naked ocean - which it succeeded in doing. They used the term 'virtual landing pad' which was just that, virtual. There was never to be any scenario in which it would not then topple over once the engines shut off.
The Reg use of the term 'splashdown' might be a bit misleading, as we associate it with parachuting capsules using the water to cushion the final bit of deceleration. This isn't what happened here. Starship actually hovered with zero velocity relative to the ocean. Objective met, the engines then shut off.
Had there been a structure in place, it wouldn't have toppled over.
"Had there been a structure in place, it wouldn't have toppled over."
Just for accuracy and completeness, yes,it probably would have toppled over. There are no landing legs so it'd be landing on its engine bell-ends, which would probably be crushed and give way under the mass above :-)
Just for a accuracy and completeness
I took Dave’s (Brian’s?) comment above, “Had there been a structure in place, it wouldn't have toppled over.” to be so broad as to include landing legs or a tower with chopsticks, a gate lounge, expensive duty free… in the same way saying “blessed are the cheesemakers” is “not meant to be taken literally, it refers to any manufacturers of all dairy products.
Cheers Atomic, by 'structure' I did mean a tall tower with 'chopsticks'. However, I had earlier mentioned Falcon 9's platforms and barges, which is why John Brown thought that's what I meant. Which was a fair reading, because I see now I i was ambiguous.
"Cheers Atomic, by 'structure' I did mean a tall tower with 'chopsticks'. However, I had earlier mentioned Falcon 9's platforms and barges, which is why John Brown thought that's what I meant. Which was a fair reading, because I see now I i was ambiguous."
Thank you for the gracious clarification, but also thank you for allowing me to respond with a sentence that used "bell-ends" :-)
Just for accuracy and completeness, yes,it probably would have toppled over. There are no landing legs so it'd be landing on its engine bell-ends, which would probably be crushed and give way under the mass above
I guess accuracy is also one of those unknowns. So check off correct attitude and velocity, but did it hit the right spot in the ocean? The booster got a bunch of reinforcement which increased it's mass, but we've yet to see an attempt to recover one for re-use. But they already land Falcons pretty accurately, so who knows? Much more to come.
I guess reusability is going to be the biggest challenge, if the Shotwell vision of suborbital passenger flight is to become reality. The test demonstrated the advantages of stainless steel over aluminium and didn't melt, but how much the heat might have affected the steel. Then managing the mass budget, so heavier booster and Starship will translate to reduced payload. Still good progress though.
>>Well then it was a failure. Yet another one.
What? How the actual foxtrot was it a failure?
Ok one of the Raptors flamed out, but did not affect the booster mission, nor the Starship mission.
In terms of flight profile, the super heavy booster did exactly what SpaceX wanted it to. It re-entered the atmosphere (sort of, you could argue it never really left it), descended to the Gulf of Mexico exectly where it was meant to, slowed it's descent to 0km/h at sea level then fell over because, well have you ever tried walking on water?
Hey guys, let be charitable to Pascal, he was probably getting mixed up with SpaceX's early attempts to land Falcon 9 boosters on floating platforms. That almost seems like it only happened yesterday, such has the rate of progress been, so a casual observer could be forgiven for confusing the two.
"It re-entered the atmosphere (sort of, you could argue it never really left it)"
Pretty tenuous argument... (pun intended).
The booster had an apogee in excess of 109km, which is well over the karman line, though well below the ~160km of the lowest long lived satellites.
The reason the reentry is less spectacular (and I'm sure you already know this, but for other readers) isn't that it's not hitting the atmosphere, but it's doing ~1000 km/h when it does so (subsequently acceneration to ~4,500 before the atmosphere really puts the brakes on), not the ~25k which results from reentry from orbital velocity, or the ~40k from lunar return.
Only the most cynical could call IFT4 a failure. If anything it's out-done expectations. Maintaining control despite massive damage?
Apollo 13 was called the successful failure, and, similarly had a failure of an engine in the boost stages of the mission. Albeit overshadowed by other glitches.
My favourite successful failure was a test of the Apollo launch abort system. The plan was to put a boilerplate capsule and launch abort tower onto a 'Little Joe' rocket, and test that it worked at high speed.
However, due to an error in the gyros, after launch the rocket started spinning so fast it disintegrated, fortunately this triggered the launch abort system, which did a textbook job of pulling the capsule away from an exploding rocket.
So, although the test wasn't quite as high, or as fast, as planned, it did show that the system functioned correctly in the worst possible circumstances.
Even IF there had been a platform AND Starship had toppled over, SpaceX would still have considered the flight a success. Why?
Because they already know they can land rockets on their tails with Falcon 9 booster, and are confident they can make it work with both Spaceship and it its booster. What they are really concerned about, because they haven't had the data before, is the heat shielding during re-entry.
Elon Musk, in reply to Cmdr Chris Hadfield:
“Thanks Chris! A fully and immediately reusable orbital heat shield, which (as you know) has never been made before, is the single toughest problem remaining. Being able to iterate with many ideas on many ships is key to solving this.”
You're misunderstanding what this was. They set the booster down in the water at around 2 or 3 km/hr, in a vertical position -- which is exactly what they were trying to do.
It was a test flight. They intended to expend the booster. Eventually (apparently in the near term) they are going to attempt to set the booster down on arms extending from the launch tower. Whether that's attempted on the next test flight probably has a lot to do with just how much booster descent control they had, and how accurately they placed the water landing.
By the way, every single other US rocket manufacturer dumps their booster in the ocean -- IIRC, Rocket Lab may have recovered and refurbished one. Everyone else throws them away.
The docking of Boeing's Starliner nearly failed due to a problem that "appeared to be software-related".
Recently a "serious software glitch" meant that a 737-800 plane taking off from Bristol Airport barely cleared the runway when the auto-throttle disengaged when taking off (scary). Boeing are apparently "aware" of the problem but are seemingly unable to reproduce it.
Maybe Boeing should stop kidding itself that it can write software.
As with a lot of other incidents, let's wait and see what the investigation actually shows. With these sorts of accidents it's not entirely unknown for the outcome to be "Ooops, someone pressed the wrong button" or "Ooops, someone made a mistake in setting takeoff limits". That's then an error in training or procedure that but that is not necessarily down to Boeing design/engineering problems.
Interesting that all the posts but this one are congratulating Starship. You can see who does space travel better these days. As for Starliner, it could be niggles that will get sorted next time, but you do wonder if there are more fundamental issues. I know NASA are Congress-bound to support Boeing and ULA but I guess there are quite a few in NASA who wish they could just go all-in with SpaceX and forget the others.
> Interesting that all the posts but this one are congratulating Starship.
Readers of a tech blog are drawn to the new and the novel. Starliner has only just achieved what another system, Crew Dragon, has being doing for a few years now. Starship OTOH is trying something that has never been done before. It's exciting.
None of us want the Starliner mission to be exciting. We're wishing the Starliner crew a safe and boring* mission.
*Relatively speaking, of course.
Well it was discovered during the Boeing max investigations that much of their software is outsourced to cheap contractors, Boeing just handed over work packages with some specifications. I'd assume the Starliner SW is in-house but obviously it's dangerous to make assumptions and even so - who knows how the in-house SW dev is managed. Does NASA mandate something about best practices, quality and testing?
Kudos to the SpaceX team for building both the largest space launch vehicle, and a vehicle which maintained control and orientation all the way to a powered soft landing, while having its control surfaces vaporized. The doubters will doubtless have retreated further under their rocks.
> The doubters will doubtless have retreated further under their rocks.
This flight for Starship went well.
But for many of your "doubters", the issue has always been the overpromising - and no matter how well *this* flight did, compared to all the promises and the still to be demonstrated capabilities (in-orbit docking, re-fueling, space walks and working airlocks would be neat additions) there are good reasons to doubt that a Moon mission will occur anywhere near the current schedule. Or even that the thing will actually lift all the Starlink birds in time to be useful.
The strange thing is that the people disappointed by overpromising must actually consider Musk Tweets to be a source of factual information. For reasonable people, that ship's automated flight termination system activated years ago.
There are lies, damned lies and rocket launch schedules.
"But for many of your "doubters", the issue has always been the overpromising"...
No. The issue has always been stupidity.
The "doubters" expect 100% perfection on the first try, and if a flight is only 90% successful they call it a "failure". Which means they are idiots. Rocket science simply doesn't work that way. NASA had numerous launch failures (many of them spectacular ones) before they managed to get Alan Shepard to clear atmosphere on the US' first sub-orbital hop ever. Pioneer 1 fell back to Earth. Mercury-Redstone 1 lifted off a few inches and then dropped back onto the pad in a huge fireball. Mercury-Atlas 1 exploded in under a minute after launch. MA-3 self destructed following guidance system failure. And that's just a few of them.
Peeps, this is how it works! You try, and you see what works and what doesn't. You learn from it, and you fix what doesn't work before trying again, at which point you will usually find other things that need improving, fixing or changing. Rinse and repeat.
This is not "failure", and it is no reason to doubt what Nasa did Way Back When, and what SpaceX does now. Explosions are an essential part of the process: they reveal shortcomings in the design so that these shortcomings can be remedied. Calling this part of the development process "repeated failure" and laughing derisively (et tu, El Reg!) is dumb and and only serves to illustrate how little the "doubters" understand about how things work in rocket tech development.
Starship powers back through the atmosphere, does a backflip and then floats in the air (probably letting off fireworks and singing "hail to the chief") before going plop into the water.
Starliner goes old school and crashes into the ground 1960's Russian (or Bulgarian airbag) stylee.
I might choose Starship as a ride.
Looking at it another way. Starliner uses technology that's been well proven for over half a century. Starship is doing something brand new and unproven.
I'd rather fly with the airbags for a couple of years and let them sort out the teething troubles in the new tech. After that though it's like choosing to cross the USA in a train or plane. Both perfectly safe, but unless you have days to kill, you just wouldn't bother with the train anymore.
To be quite honest, I am at a loss as to why Starliner continues to be so leaky. Have they really gone downhill from putting men on the moon to the point where they can't plug a leaky pipe or two after months of "working on it"? Yes, I know it's rocket science, but making sure pipes don't leak is also basic engineering. Maybe Boing should consider hiring a few plumbers or gas fitters. The sort of chaps who know how to use a shifting spanner. I mean, if they can make sure my kitchen doesn't flood or explode, they should be able to help Boing out as well, surely!
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