Starship’s path to orbit is not being a straight line, and the last months of the highest rocket in the world exemplify it bleeding. After losing four consecutive ships and a super heavy, Spacex has turned the failures into data with which to improve its design. Soon we will know if they have worked: there is only one week left for the tenth release.
Green light for the tenth flight. The Federal Aviation Administration of the United States has closed the investigation of the latest Starship incidents and authorized Spacex on the next flight, scheduled for Sunday, August 24.
The tenth Mission of Starship will prove the opening of the load gate and the redempted of an engine in space. In addition, Spacex engineers have deliberately eliminated several tiles from the thermal shield of the ship to study their behavior during the reentry.
A summer of investigations. Starship’s ninth flight, which took place on May 27, ended with the disintegration of both the Super Heavy Booster 14 and Starship 35.
- Booster 14, which was flying for the second time, failed during the ameter maneuver after Spacex put its structural loads to the limit. With a 17 degree attack angle, the fuel transfer tube was not able to withstand aerodynamic forces, which caused an explosive mixture of liquid methane and oxygen.
- The Starship 35 reached the planned speed, but a methane leak in the front cone, caused by a defective diffuser in the pressurization system of the main tank, compromised the rest of the mission. The lack of pressure prevented the ship from opening the loading gate, and caused the automatic systems to abort the engine redempted in space. The ship disintegrated spinning without control in a reentry agonizing.
To finish sinking the morals in Starbase, in mid -June, a brutal explosion made the windows of neighboring Brownsville tremble. The Starship 36, which had to fly on flight 10, disintegrated during a fuel load, generating a small geopolitical conflict with Mexico. Spacex attributes the disaster to a structural failure in a secondary nitrogen gas deposit, possibly for undetectable damage.
Booster 16 and Starship 37 ready to fly. With the causes of the latest failures already identified, Spacex has redesigned the diffuser of the ship and implemented more strict inspection protocols for pressurized nitrogen deps. Two new prototypes, Booster 16 and Ship 37, are ready for Starship’s tenth flight with such ambitious objectives as ever.
The Super Heavy propeller will not try to return to the tower, but will merit in the Gulf of Mexico, simulating a failure in one of its landing engines to check if a backup engine can take over, ending the maneuver with a “stationary flight” on the ocean with only two lit engines.
For its part, the Starship ship will try to open its gate for the first time and display eight Starlink satellites models in a suborbital trajectory (which will be burned during the reentry). It will also try to redecend a Raptor engine in the emptiness of the space to exorbitate in a controlled way.
The most striking thing will fly with a significant amount of deliberately absent thermal tiles to submit vulnerable areas to greater stress and test new materials, such as metal with active cooling. The reentry is also designed to make the most the rear flaps of the ship at the point of maximum pressure.
Starship’s third version on the way. There are only two Starship flights with the current design, which has meant great headaches for Spacex. The company finalizes the development of the Starship 3, of which we have seen full renders and some components already manufactured, such as its new grid fins and its gigantic fuel tube.
Although the new Super Heavy will wear three aerodynamic grilles instead of four, they are 50 % larger and more robust. This new design not only allows descents with higher attack angles (just the maneuver that caused the failure in flight 9), but fulfills a double function.
The new fins incorporate an anchor point and are located below in the rocket to align with the arms of the launch tower, which will use them to lift and catch the propeller. Being lower, they also receive less heat from the starship engines during the separation of hot stages.
Images | Spacex
In WorldOfSoftware | What Spacex has achieved with Starship is incredible. The only problem is that he has done it at the expense of the health of his employees
