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SpaceX Starship

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Lmao. Yeahhh everyone including myself was really hoping this thing would get off without a hitch, but is what it is unfortunately. It sounds like the mid-october launch window is the primary focus from what I've gathered, but the official details aren't out yet (that I've seen), One post I saw that was a good reminder for me, is the Shuttle had its fair share of scrubs and rollbacks to the VAB through its lifetime as well, just the nature of the beast.

Here's a pretty decent article on hydrogen challenges:
Years after shuttle, NASA rediscovers the perils of liquid hydrogen

We've also got a Starlink launch tonight, stream starts in appx an hour and 40 mins. Something a little different on this one, this is the first Starlink rideshare mission in a while. They took a few Starlinks off the stack so they could also launch a sat for Boeing testing some new data/comms frequencies



Another cool deal - Firefly is making their second attempt to get to orbit with their Alpha rocket in about a week. This company and rocket seem pretty well put together, I think chances for success are high on this one. On their first attempt they lost an engine early in the flight, the rocket maintained stability until right around mach speed when it tumbled and they detonated it.

FLTA002 -To The Black - Firefly Aerospace

 
Like a glove. The second stage is still in a coast phase before its final burn and deployments, but all is looking well so far and the first stage landed nice and centered.







 
Edit NASA update on Artemis 1 as of 20 minutes ago: They're going to attempt to replace the leaky seal at the pad, but still may have to roll back to the VAB before the next attempt

Teams Continue to Review Options for Next Attempt, Prepare to Replace Seal – Artemis

Well ain't this something. Starship brought about the concept of point to point payload transport around the world, and the military took interest. Now it looks like the idea of point to point is also being explored by Rocket Lab with USAF funding. They should be able to do it now with their Electron, but their next gen fully reusable Neutron will really make this idea come to life, just as the fully reusable nature of Starship does



And here's a cool Starlink train spotting in Japan

 
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AgitatedPancake said:
Well ain't this something. Starship brought about the concept of point to point payload transport around the world, and the military took interest. Now it looks like the idea of point to point is also being explored by Rocket Lab with USAF funding. They should be able to do it now with their Electron, but their next gen fully reusable Neutron will really make this idea come to life, just as the fully reusable nature of Starship does
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I just saw a YT video yesterday covering Russian resupply efforts, hauling semis across rivers on barges. Man, would global rocket cargo delivery change so many things...

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Right. It'll always be expensive, but when you need something half way around the world NOW, literally nothing can do it faster.

Cool update on something we haven't heard about in a while, Ingenuity the little chopper on Mars took its first flight in a while. At one point they weren't sure it would survive a low battery state, not sure what changed but happy to see it flying again.



Flight #31...that's wild. The little chopper that could



edit ah, and there's the explanation. Cool.

 
Ship had a static fire today that may have been all six engines, awesome stuff...except for the grass fire it started haha. Doesn't look like a big deal though, burning itself out





And Booster 7 looked like it was going to get the first action of the day, but just ended up being a spin test of what seems to be many different engines

 
Pretty cool Starlink launch tonight - First booster going for it's 14th flight, and it's a pretty intricate mission because it's a ride share. The second stage is going to have 5 separate burns, two to position the rideshare for deployment, two more to position the starlinks for deployment, then one to deorbit the second stage.

13 minutes away

 
Well, some pretty cool space stuff happening on this day of remembrance. Firefly is trying to reach orbit with their Alpha rocket for the second time in a few hours. Fingers crossed they have a solid flight to orbit!

The live stream is being hosted by Everyday Astronaut here: (stream is live in an hour and 15 minutes, launch window opens at 3PM Pacific time IIRC



Here's a little info about them:

Alpha - Firefly Aerospace

And their first flight where they had an engine shut down early. Their own words:

"Here are a few specific notes about the flight:

The vehicle released and cleared the pad correctly. The various connections and moving mechanisms connected to the rocket all worked correctly. The vehicle controlled itself perfectly off the pad, with thrust vectoring eliminating all tipping or rotation, and the vehicle increased in speed at the exact rate that was predicted in modelling.

About 15 seconds into the flight, engine 2 (there are four Reaver engines on the first stage) shut down. It was an uneventful shutdown – the engine didn’t fail -- the propellant main valves on the engine simply closed and thrust terminated from engine 2.

The vehicle continued to climb and maintain control for a total of about 145 seconds, whereas nominal first stage burn duration is about 165 seconds. However, due to missing the thrust of 1 of 4 engines the climb rate was slow, and the vehicle was challenged to maintain control without the thrust vectoring of engine 2. Alpha was able to compensate at subsonic speeds, but as it moved through transonic and into supersonic flight, where control is most challenging, the three engine thrust vector control was insufficient and the vehicle tumbled out of control. The range terminated the flight using the explosive Flight Termination System (FTS). The rocket did not explode on its own."

 
About 14 minutes away if the schedule holds. All looks good so far, but the launch window is multiple hours long so they have flexibility if extra time ends up being required
 
Welp, Blue Origin flew their New Shepard suborbital rocket this morning, and it had an engine failure leading to an in flight abort. Thankfully no people were on board this time, just science payloads. But a bit nerve wracking nonetheless. The abort motor in the capsule fired and moved the capsule a safe distance from the booster, where it was able to sucessfully deploy its parachutes and land without further incident

 
Spacex's record is looking damn fine these days in light of issues others are having - Blue Origin, SLS, Capstone, Astra.
Actually spacex did lose one batch of satellites a while back - wasn't it due to a solar flare or something like that?

Hope they can keep it going and have the same success with starship.
 
Hah funny you mentioned that, and completely agreed. The last two nights, SpaceX has had to scrub their scheduled Starlink launch due to thunderstorms and I was thinking to myself, I feel like it's been a while since they even had a weather scrub. Launching has become so routine for them it's easy to forget that space is still hard. And what's absolutely wild to me, their insane ramp up in launch cadence to get to ~60 launches this year...isn't over yet. They're targeting around 100 launches in 2023....one every 3 and a half days. That is so hard to comprehend, it's wild.

As far as starship goes, I expect to see a few more blow up, but once they have it figured out and iterated to a pretty reliable point, its track record should surpass even Falcon 9. The amount of redundancy you have to engine failures when you have 33 on the booster and 6 or 9 on the ship is excellent (as long as there isn't a cascade failure or tank/plumbing failure)

And speaking of capstone, I really hope they can get that thing back to a stable state able to complete it's mission!

CAPSTONE enters safe mode during trajectory correction maneuver - SpaceNews
 
I rarely post stuff from the photographers capturing pics of the boosters coming back to port after landing, but this one is cool. This is the current life leader returning from its 14th flight. It's getting a pretty good soot buildup by now. I wonder if they'll ever give them a full scrub, but I kinda like that it shows it's battle scars, and shows that the main tanks hardly need any attention besides ultrasounding the weld seams (I think that's what they're doing?)

 
Hell yeah, definitely check out the websites that can give you viewing windows depending on your location. even the ones they don't rank as good sightings can be impressive if you have a decent view of the horizon! I've been lucky enough to catch a handful of good sightings, definitely worth the effort to check it out, usually within an hour or so of sunset and sunrise (so you are shaded, but the sats are in direct sunlight)

Starlink launch in less than 10 minutes, stream just went live



And Rocket Lab had a launch today as well, another clean flight in the books

 
Aaaand scrubbed for weather. They only had a 10% chance of good weather, but I'm sure they're going to give every chance a full opportunity just to minimize impact to their overall launch cadence. Sounds like attempt #4 will be tomorrow
 
Alright on the 6th consecutive day attempting to launch these Starlinks, it looks like the weather is finally going to play nice today. Around 30 minutes until the attempt

 
Booster 8 rolled out for the first time the other day, and as we speak the chopsticks are about to lift Booster 7 for the upgrades mentioned in that tweet above.



And tomorrow it sounds like we're gunna get an update on Rocket Lab's new Neutron rocket, this one has a ton of promise, can't wait to see more

 
Busy morning for spaceflight

In about an hour we should hear more about Rocket Lab's new rocket (linked above)

But right now - SLS is doing another fueling test at the launch pad after they replaced those leaky hydrogen seals. The morning started out with another leak very similar to what was observed during the launch attempts, they did the "turn it off and turn it back on again" fix procedure to let the seals warm up before attempting again, which seems to have worked. They've been able to continue with testing, with leaks still being registered but small enough to be below their safety limits.



And Booster 7 is currently being set down on a transport stand (linked above, they started last night but waited until this morning)

And Soyuz launched to the ISS this morning with the latest crew including one American astronaut (and the next Dragon will have on Russian cosmonaut)

 
surpip said:
I hate to say it but I will be completely unsurprised if the Artemis launch doesn't go as planned.
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It sucks, but I agree with ya. I'm still hoping for the best, but every hiccup on this path to flight just hurts my confidence in the chances of a flawless flight. Damn I really want it to go right though. The ripple effects from a failure would be profound
 
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