Starship 12.5km Test Flight - Grain silos can fly if you believe in them

[usernames can change now!]

https://youtu.be/ap-BkkrRg-o

T-45 minutes. First flight of Starship Serial Number 8. First Starship test above 150m. First Starship test with the flappy bits attached. First relight and landing test. Will probably explode, tune in for the pretty fireworks.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

It got scrubbed yesterday. Automatically, by an engine computer or something. This is a retry, apparently.

 

[Stephanie Bustcakes]

I heard it has a 1 in 3 chance of successfully landing.

If it pulls off it's crazy gymnastic dive and sticks the landing it's gonna look cool. If it crashes and explodes, it's gonna look cool. Win-win.

 

[TenMilesWide]

Didn't quite stick the landing, oof.

 

[гape]

rip

 

[Citizen Calamity]

It did not land but it sure did look cool.

 

[teriyakiburns]

green fire and an explosion right at the end. Nice.

 

[Namesarehardtocomeupwith]

At least the explosion was cool

 

[Miller]

That was really impressive. They might have failed the landing but they've made a lot of progress.

 

[Stephanie Bustcakes]

F

 

[usernames can change now!]

MASSIVE SUCCESS

 

[Sam Losco]

MASSIVE SUCCESS Ver archivo adjunto 1777585

"Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD, but we got all the data we needed!"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1336809767574982658

Yeah, the landing didn't work out, but once you consider that this is a completely new ship design never flown before and using completely new engines that have never flown before (the design, not just the individual engines), this was pretty successful.

They will sort out the problems and the next flight will be better. If it crashes again it'll be for a different reason. Space is hard.

Edit
Cool view of the landing flip.

 

[Leonard Helplessness]

Yeah, I can’t really knock SpaceX for fucking up with the intention of learning from it. Hell, landing rockets wasn’t a thing for the longest time, and it took this to make landing rockets a thing:

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

This was one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, not gonna lie. That bellyflop and then going back into landing orientation was just surreal to watch.
Launching a big and powerful rocket isn't something new tbh, but this had such a ridiculous flight profile, going to 12km, stable flight with only 2 or only 1 engine, then hovering there for some time on one engine, turning sideways, freefalling in a controlled descent towards the landing pad and then reigniting the engines to orient the ship into landing configuration... that was the most Kerbal thing I have ever seen.

Some engine failure made them touch down too early and too hard, but overall, it didn't slam down that hard, considering that the nosecone survived. If anything, this showed that even a sudden engine failure doesn't mean loss of control.

Cool view of the landing flip.
Your browser is not able to display this video.

This isn't slowed down footage, this is real time.

It's an object, the height of a 12-story building coming towards you at free fall speed.
Just let that sink in.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

The good news is that SN8 got the hell away from the launch pad. So they can roll SN9 out there soon.

 

[Sam Losco]

Scott Manley has a good recap video up now explaining everything.

 

[usernames can change now!]

SN9 fell over

 

[Mr. Skeltal]

Scott Manley has a good recap video up now explaining everything.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=egHxiX40eJY

Green fire typically means copper. Unless the Raptor engine uses thallium or boron materials I'm damn sure that green flame out was indicative of a copper fire.
I would suspect that there's an engineering oversight with the Raptor engine prototypes that would allow a copper bearing component to heat past melting point and foul the engine or the full-cylce loop is not as impervious to liquid oxygen permeation as was expected.

My guess would be the oxygen side pre-burner. LOX is an extremely caustic environment for any metal, let alone reactive copper. Copper alloys can be used for basic friction bearings. Maybe the use of such a bearing alloy was used to speed up production or for weight concerns. Bearings can get real heavy real quick.

 

[usernames can change now!]

Green fire typically means copper. Unless the Raptor engine uses thallium or boron materials I'm damn sure that green flame out was indicative of a copper fire.
I would suspect that there's an engineering oversight with the Raptor engine prototypes that would allow a copper bearing component to heat past melting point and foul the engine or the full-cylce loop is not as impervious to liquid oxygen permeation as was expected.

My guess would be the oxygen side pre-burner. LOX is an extremely caustic environment for any metal, let alone reactive copper. Copper alloys can be used for basic friction bearings. Maybe the use of such a bearing alloy was used to speed up production or for weight concerns. Bearings can get real heavy real quick.

According to Musk, they lost pressure in the methane header tank during landing. This caused the engine to run very oxygen rich, and lose cooling (because it's regenerativelycooled by fuel). The oxygen preburner is made of black magic superalloys, but parts of the engine that are supposed to be cool and methane rich suddenly turned very hot and very oxygen rich.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

Kind of crazy to think that maybe these Starship test versions might be able to land on their second attempt, if indeed it was just the header tank suffering some issue...
They perform a maneuver that has never been attempted before to perform a kind of suicide burn landing that was purely theoretical 2 decades ago and has become a fairly common-day occurance now.