Or a combined problem, like the Raptors not handling the g loading of the flip manoever, which coild 't be simulated in testing, or the engine skirt getting pressurized with unburned fuel, or they could still be having problems with the fuel feed during the flip manoever, and this time it just prevented the second engine from lighting at all.
And it sure looked like a bunch of shrapnel went past SN10. So it will need a good inspection before flying,
It seemed awfully bold of them to have SN10 so close to the landing site of SN9, whose performance wasn’t guaranteed.
To anyone who hasn’t seen the footage yet, you might as well skip to a point about 10 seconds before the crash, as everything up to that point was very similar to SN8’s flight.
As it flipped to manoeuvre the nose probably tipped down too much but they were able to correct that to get the vehicle more horizontal. Perhaps that was deliberate, but that seemed to be different from SN8.
It shows that they do have a decent level of control.
Starlink-18 about to launch. Amusingly, it’s going to launch before Starlink-17. They almost launched within a couple of hours each other, but 17 got bumped.
Another flawless launch and the booster stuck the landing again.
With all ghe talk of Starship, we shouldn’t forget the amazing achievements of F9. When they started trying to land it, old space industry hands said that it wouldn’t work. Then when it did, they said it would take so much refurbishment between flights that it would not be much cheaper than iust throwing away the booster. And they said they’d be lucky to get two or three flights out them.
One of the recent F9 launches in January used a booster that has flown just a few weeks before in December (indicating not much refurbishment needed), and they stuck the landing - for the seventh time with that booster. SpaceX has defied the critics pretty much every step of the way.
Starlink-17 (tomorrow) will be the 8th launch of a booster.
Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) said that 10 flights is their breakeven point:
Also that “no one has come anywhere close”. Musk, on the other hand, says 2-3 flights is breakeven. In any case, they’ll likely hit 10 flights this year on their flight leaders, so they’ll hit the exaggerated and arbitrary threshold that their competitor mentioned.
Re SN9: Next time can we link to a livestream that doesn’t have guys screeching falsetto as the mission progresses? Please? I’ve had it up to here since SN8
I keep the Everyday Astronaut and NasaSpaceflight streams open, but on mute. Only the SpaceX stream gets audio. I’ll try to remember that for next time. Yeah, it was kinda fun the first time to hear the excitement, but I’m kinda done with it too. Too bad Scott Manley isn’t doing a livestream… he’s a bit more reserved.
We got our Starlink last week! We’re building a new house about 5 miles from our rental, so ordered it at the rental address. They said it wouldn’t work at the build address–that each satellite currently serves a “cell” 8-10 miles in diameter (which seems insane). Hooked it up at the build and got 110 MBPS and 40 msecs latency. Very stoked. The speed has varied to as low as 40 but even that is very acceptable. Our only other option was radio frequency, and that tower burned down this fall in our forest fire. RF is very likely doomed by Starlink. We are in SW Montana.
The SpaceX stream only starts a couple of minutes before launch and since there’s no designated launch time the only way to see what’s happening and when it’s happening is via one of fan streams where they are quite good at monitoring the tank farms and the propellant loading to estimate a time. LabPadre is quite good - high quality video but without the shrieking.
Nice! Have you experienced any dropouts yet? I know they’ve warned of occasional loss of connectivity, but every new batch of satellites should lessen the likelihood. They’re at over 1000 satellites already but not all are in position. Another 60 will go up in a few days.
I believe the cells you’ve mentioned are essentially artificial. There aren’t enough satellites to provide individual service to 10-mile-diameter cells, but it is likely that each one is only served by one satellite at a time for now. The satellites move of course, so the cells get handed off as satellites pass overhead. At any given time, one satellite is probably serving hundreds of cells, though for now most will be empty.
They’ve said that they don’t support moving base stations, but that’s another semi-artificial restriction and they’ll probably support it eventually. It’ll be pretty cool when you can attach an antenna to the top of an RV and get service anywhere.
Looking forward to hearing your long-term reports on the service!
So far it’s been intermittent use since it’s on a job site. We have set up a Verizon VOIP cell extender, and that’s working fine. It had 60 MBPS yesterday in a blizzard, so that’s a good sign. It’s melting the snow off just fine so far–this week will be the test with high temps below zero. We’ll move in in a few months and my wife will start doing her GIS work from home–that will be the real measure. FOAF has it and works from home and says it drops every so often for a minute or 2. I don’t know what the economics of it are for SpaceX but they’re going to sell a shit-ton of these things.
Also saw a headline that they are applying to the FCC to supply cell service in some manner. I’ll have to learn more about that–another cash cow if it works.
The booster on tonight’s Starlink launch didn’t make it. Not sure yet what the deal was, but the entry burn looked off and telemetry stopped at ~21 km altitude. Droneship view showed a bright flash but not much else. Might have been it hitting the ocean surface.
Ahh well, the booster still made 6 successful flights. The second stage looks to be fine, though they haven’t done the final insertion burn yet.
There were a few seagulls hanging out on the droneship. They lucked out this time…
I’m curious if there is any sort of tracking device on the booster itself that would help locate it, akin to an airliner’s “black box”. Although in a couple thousand feet of water such things might be useless.
So far, they haven’t had too much trouble tracking down even the debris from failed landings. After all, the booster is on a nearly ballistic trajectory and on radar for most of the way down. The droneship itself may have some tracking for when the booster goes under the horizon relative to the launch site.
I expect we’ll know pretty soon what the basic problem was. Someone on Reddit analyzing the video telemetry found pretty clear evidence that there was an early shutdown of one of the engines for the reentry burn. The booster probably did not survive reentry unscathed, but SpaceX would have had good telemetry up until that point (even if it did make it through reentry, the failed engine probably would have prevented a good landing).
Cameras might be the most valuable thing they can salvage from the debris. SpaceX uses beefed-up GoPros to collect footage, since they have limited ability to downstream video, especially during reentry.
All being well SN10 should test today. The pad is cleared but they haven’t started loading the propellant yet. The launch window will be open until 6pm CST.
Launch scheduled for 2.14pm CST - but the nature of these things make the timeline only a possibility.
So 23 mins from time of posting.
The “tri vent” just happened and it’s doing engine chill. So far it’s on schedule.
Crossing fingers. They are going to light all three engines for landing this time, then shut down the ones not needed. So one of three engines could fail and they still get a landing. The way they did it before created two single points of failure.