Seems to be a lot of fire for Main Engine Cutoff...
Ship still spinning...
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brb Monkhouse Stampede, Thu 20 Apr 2023, 14:38,
Reply)
Starbase appears to be heavily damaged...
Parts of the launch platform appear to have hit the water tower and dented it, shit is still on fire. Lots of debris everywhere.
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brb Monkhouse Stampede, Thu 20 Apr 2023, 14:53,
Reply)
A rapid unscheduled disassembly happens to me after to much vodka
Have sent to the profanisaurus for good measure
(, Thu 20 Apr 2023, 14:53, Reply)
They’re not supposed to flip Superheavy until after staging.
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wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Thu 20 Apr 2023, 18:51,
Reply)
Apparently flipping is part of the staging,
at least according to Tim Dodd. The momentum of the rotation separates the two vehicles rather than having explosive decouplers, springs or retro rockets.
It's crazy.
It seems they attempted the manoeuvrer while too low in thick atmosphere, or just plain lost control of the rocket and all that flipping was unintentional. There was a call for main engine cut off but engines were still firing (or slowly exploding).
Personally, I would bring back the extending gridfins rather than having them open the whole time (they just can't be good for stability during ascent and they are a massive drag) and I'd buy back those oil platforms and commit to sea launches going forward. Bring back the big landing legs, too, no fucking way is that launch tower catching a falling starship any time soon.
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brb Monkhouse Stampede, Thu 20 Apr 2023, 19:49,
Reply)
That seems needlessly Kerbal
If the whole point of the first stage is to place the second stage on a safe trajectory to orbit, tumbling it into a spin seems like a very bad idea.
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wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Thu 20 Apr 2023, 23:04,
Reply)
Seems a bit like they're working around the KSP2 docking port bug!
I guess they're prioritising design simplicity and mass savings over losses to momentum and aerodynamics. Ideally Starship doesn't do any cartwheels, glides away and powers through with minimal loss of speed, while Superheavy does a 180 (or 540?) rotation to become aerodynamically stable while flying in reverse.
It does seem utterly insane, but reusable decouplers or spring powered docking ports are probably an even more complex problem to solve than flipping a rocket.
This test flight was mainly concerned with taking off, staging, and crashing the two stages in roughly the right places. No payload, no attempt to make orbit, so they were running light and massively overpowered. Assuming it truly exploded due to auto-destruct the structure did very well, performing numerous flips and rotations while firing its engines, shedding about 1000kmh in a matter of seconds and holding together. All this with no autostrut!
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brb Monkhouse Stampede, Fri 21 Apr 2023, 19:22,
Reply)